ADRC Staff

Dr. Fauth studies stress related to dementia caregiving, and assesses caregiver interventions, most recently an online self-guided ACT intervention. She also examines ways to support quality of life for persons living with dementia.

Dr. Boghosian is psychologist licensed in the state of Utah. She is the Director of Psychology Services in the Sorenson Center for Clinical Excellence at USU. Dr. Boghosian’s clinical and research expertise has spanned the past eleven years and targeted the integration of medical and mental health concerns across the lifespan and cultures. She has been involved in the in the training and supervision of psychology students in the provision of empirically supported interventions with a broad range of populations.

Dr. Bolton studies how higher brain processes contribute to balance control and falls in older adults.

Dr. Borrie's research focuses on improving communication for people with neurological speech disorders.

Dr. Buhusi is studying disruptions in sleep cycles in people living with Alzheimer’s disease using mice that model Alzheimer’s and cognitive decline.

Dr. Buhusi is studying ways cells communicate in the brain and how this communication is altered in Alzheimer's disease and normal aging.

After a 20+year "corporate world" career, Jon followed his passion into the health and fitness industry, first as a personal trainer, then as a trainer/business owner. In 2009, he returned to school and completed his MS in Exercise Science at the University of Nebraska-Omaha (2013). As a Graduate Assistant, he fell in love with teaching, resulting in another career change and over his career has been a faculty member at Nebraska Wesleyan University, Purdue University, the University of Nebraska-Kearney, University of South Dakota, Briar Cliff University, and Utah State University. He holds a Strength and Conditioning Specialist certification (CSCS) from the National Strength and Conditioning Association and has held various Personal and Fitness Training certificates from the American Council on Exercise, International Sports Sciences Association, and the National Council on Strength and Fitness. He is a member of the National Strength and Conditioning Association and serves on the organization's Utah State Advisory Committee.

Dr. Clevenger is an assistant professor with a background in exercise physiology. Her research interests are in the promotion and measurement of physical activity. Currently, she is using secondary data analysis to understand the patterns of 24-hour movement behaviors (physical activity, sleep, sedentary behavior) in those with or at risk for Alzheimer’s disease.

Dr. Crowley is a psychologist licensed in the state of Utah. She has expertise in research and intervention in chronic pain, particularly assessing functional outcomes of inpatient pain programs.  She has worked with interdisciplinary teams in both research and intervention.  In addition, Dr. Crowley has extensive experience in doctoral student training mentorship and supervision, including both research and intervention training.

Dr. Dakin’s current research focuses on untangling the contribution of different sources of sensory information to the process of movement and movement perception. Other related topics of research have included investigation of the vestibular contribution to locomotor stability and visual orientation perception in Spinocerebellar Ataxia. 

Dr. DasGupta's research, at the intersection of health and geography, is focused on examining the role of place (culture) and space (geography) as social determinants of health with a particular focus on the elderly. Her current research is centered on analyzing geographic disparities in population aging (age-dependency, age segregation) and place-based variations in older adult health outcomes (older adult falls, elderly mortality).

Dr. Huang focuses on unraveling key cellular processes of brain-diseases (including Alzheimer's) and neuro-regeneration, through the engineering of novel human-brain tissue-chip platforms.

Dr. Aaron Hunt is an Assistant Professor in the Master of Public Health Program at Utah State University (USU) and the Health & Wellness Specialist for USU Extension. He earned his Ph.D. in Public Health from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and works in substance use, mental health, maternal & child health, with a focus on health promotion. Dr. Hunt focuses on addressing opioid use disorder in rural communities by expanding prevention, treatment, and recovery services. He also works with USU Extension to train community health workers on Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, helping communities understand the disease and support those impacted. His efforts emphasize reducing stigma, promoting harm reduction, and improving access to care in underserved areas.

Dr. Jordan is studying which cognitive abilities, such as numerical estimations, are left intact during the process of typical aging compared to dementia.

Heather is a researcher at Utah State University's Institute for Disability Research, Policy, and Practice. Her research centers on improving mental health and quality of life. Current projects include testing the feasibility and acceptability of an online single session intervention for individuals with a recent dementia diagnosis.

Dr. Kleinstaeuber’s research and clinical work concentrates on individuals suffering from persistent somatic symptoms (e.g., chronic pain) and symptom-related emotional distress. Her research endeavors cover the evaluation of interventions to help individuals with chronic symptos managing their distress as well as on psychosocial mechanisms of symptom distress.

Michael Levin, Ph.D. is a professor in the Department of Psychology at Utah State University. His research focuses on developing, evaluating, and disseminating acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) programs in an online, self-guided format for a wide range of mental health concerns. He co-directs the USU ACT Research Group (https://www.utahact.com/) and oversees the suite of ACT Guide self-help programs available to the public through USU (https://ACTGuide.usu.edu).

Dr. Yin Liu studies the chronic stress of dementia family caregiving, salivary biomarkers of stress and health, and interventions and health behaviors to reduce the impact of stressor exposures.

Dr. Nagaraj studies the effect of hearing aid use on cognition in older adults with hearing loss.

Dr. Amy Odum is a Professor in the Department of Psychology. Her research interests are in basic behavioral phenomena, such as response persistence, sensitivity to delayed outcomes, conditional discriminations, and environmental influences on drug effects. Her work has been funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute of Mental Health. She completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Vermont’s Human Behavioral Pharmacology Laboratory after earning my PhD and MA in psychology, specializing in behavior analysis, from West Virginia University.

Dr. Studenka studies motor abilities and is looking at how motor planning develops over the course of the lifespan, concentrating on specific aspects of motor planning and one’s ability to change a motor plan with cognitive decline.

JoAnn Tschanz, Ph.D. is a professor of psychology and a clinical neuropsychologist with expertise in risk factors for Alzheimer's disease and related disorders and their clinical expression after onset. She has also studied cognitive decline in late life, and is the USU director of the Cache County Study on Memory in Aging.

Dr. Vargis studies beta-amyloid, which is present in the brains of people Alzheimer's disease.  She evaluates the effect of beta-amyloid buildup on cardiac muscle and retinal cell health.

Dr. Warren studies the role of norepinephrine in reactive balance and how its efficacy changes with age and in age-related disorders.

Dr. Emily Weichart is an Assistant Professor of Psychology in the Brain and Cognition specialization and Principal Investigator of the Quantified Cognition Lab. Her research examines how aging impacts the brain's ability to manage competing information during memory retrieval and decision-making, focusing on the mechanisms underlying global and local attentional control. She uses computational modeling approaches to quantify the latent cognitive processes that drive observable behavioral changes associated with aging. Dr. Weichart’s work seeks to advance our understanding of the mechanisms contributing to age-related cognitive decline, with the goal of identifying markers that differentiate healthy aging from pathological conditions.

Dr. Heys lab is aimed towards uncovering the synaptic, cellular and circuit level mechanisms that underlie formation and recall of episodic memory. Furthermore, they aim to understand how these mechanisms become disrupted during neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s Disease. Towards this end, they have developed cutting-edge optical techniques for application in awake-behaving rodents that enable recording and manipulation of neural physiology, from the level of individual synaptic spines up to thousands of simultaneously monitored neurons.

Dr. Koppelmans studies the causes and correlates of motor dysfunction in Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD). He applies structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify the neural underpinnings of such deficits. Using supervised machine learning, he determines and validates classification and prediction models for MCI and AD using a wide variety of behavioral and neural motor measures.

Dr. Ma is an MRI physicist and is interested in developing advanced MRI techniques and validating their value in clinical applications. During his PhD, he developed a series of high- resolution diffusion methods using multi-shot EPI and spiral, and successfully applied them to imaging different organs in patients, particularly in the spinal cord and pelvis. Currently he is dedicated to developing fast and reliable multi-contrast MRI tools for neurovascular diseases and translate their potential into the value of facilitating clinical practice.

Dr. Eunkyung Park is a Clinical Associate Professor and Associate Chief in the Nuclear Medicine Section at the Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences at the University of Utah Health. She is a Nuclear Medicine physician who takes care of patients having cancer, various diseases in the brain, heart and other organs through molecular imaging and targeted radiopharmaceutical therapies. She completed clinical and research training at the Seoul National University Hospital in Korea, Yale University PET Center and University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. Her main professional interests include global promotion of nuclear medicine and clinical/translational research in nuclear neurology. Dr. Park is particularly interested in early and accurate differential diagnoses of neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, frontotemporal lobar degeneration, Dementia with Lewy bodies and LATE by using brain PET imaging with radiopharmaceuticals targeting glucose metabolism, amyloid, tau and SV2A. She enjoys traveling, practicing yoga, and listening to music.

Neil Patel, MD, is an Assistant Professor of Neurotology and Skull Base Surgery within the Division of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery at the University of Utah. He has a strong interest in the treatment of skull base tumors including vestibular schwannoma (acoustic neuroma), glomus jugulare, and cochlear implantation. With nearly 50 peer-reviewed publications, he has a particular interest in hearing preservation and maximizing quality of life.

The Hill Lab is interested in how genes are regulated during heart formation. The heart begins as a linear tube and then loops to form the ball-like shape of the adult heart. Our lab combines bioinformatics and bench biology to study how gene expression drives this process. Understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying heart development will help improve diagnosis and treatment of congenital heart disease.

The Jenkins lab is very active and studies the utility of DNA methylation as a diagnostic tool for various complex diseases including infertility, Alzheimer's, and cancer among many others. This includes assessment of cell free DNA methylation signatures to identify the presence or absence of rare cell types. Using epigenetics, Dr. Jenkins hopes to improve outcomes for individuals with complex disease through providing early diagnosis as well as improving the success rate of infertility treatments both in terms of pregnancy outcome and offspring health.