Program Personnel
Join our team: If you are interested in becoming involved in our lab as a research assistant, please contact Dr. Julia Sheffler at julia.sheffler@med.fsu.edu
Program Director
Dr. Julia Sheffler is the Integrative Science for Healthy Aging Director and an assistant professor in the Florida State University College of Medicine.
Research Coordinator
Naomi Frederic recently graduated with her B.S. in Psychology. She is interested in food security, and correlations between accessibility to food and health and illness outcomes in minority communities.
Current Research Assistants
Isabel Dionne is a 1st year Behavioral Neuroscience student. She is interested in age-related changes in cognition, Alzheimer’s Disease risk factors, and the impact of technology on brain structure and function.
Helen Smith is a 4th year Computational Biology student. She is interested in geriatric illnesses, and hereditary factors of mental illness.
Andrea Bautista is a 4th year Biology student. She is interested in geriatric health, nutrition in geriatric populations, and the onset of Alzheimer’s Disease.
Viviana Gutierrez is a 4th year Cell and Molecular Neuroscience student. She is interested in lifestyle risk factors for cognitive impairment and the onset of Alzheimer’s Disease.
Sabrina Somai is a 3rd year Behavioral Neuroscience student. She is interested in cognition in older adults, Alzheimer’s Disease, and completed a UROP project on the association between ketosis and sleep quality.
Gisella David is 2nd year Psychology student. Gisella is interested in the cognition of aging adults, the onset of Alzheimer's Disease, and geropsychology.
Juhi Patel is a 4th year Behavioral Neuroscience student. She is interested in lifestyle risk factors for cognitive impairment, and correlations between nutrition and cognition.
Graduate, Bridge, and Medical Student Mentees
Giovanna Mompremier, MPH, is a current Bridge to Clinical Medicine M.S. student at the Florida State University's College of Medicine. She obtained her Bachelor of Health Science and Master of Public Health degree from the University of Florida. Her research interests include community-based participatory research (CBPR), and health disparities impacting various disadvantaged communities.
Previous Students and Mentees
Melissa Meynadasy is currently a predoctoral intern at the VA Boston Healthcare System where she will be staying on for a clinical fellowship in Geropsychology. Her graduate career research examined neural markers of emotional and cognitive function in older adults using electrophysiological methods. On internship, she is assessing ageist beliefs within long term care settings and how this may impact engagement in trauma-informed care.
Celina Meyer is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Psychology at Virginia Tec. Celina's research interests involve mechanisms of risk and resilience in lifespan development following early life stress.
Daniel Sierra is a 4th year Cell and Molecular Neuroscience major. He is interested in cognition in mid to late life, dementia risk factors, and D-Serine on temporal lobe epilepsy.
Elizabeth Lewis is a 2nd year Nursing student. She is interested in Alzheimer’s disease prevention and this past year she completed a UROP project about ketosis and sleep quality.
Sheyla Moliner is a 4th-year medical student at the Florida State University College of Medicine. She will be applying to psychiatry residency programs where she hopes to continue researching underlying biopsychosocial causes of adverse health outcomes, thereby providing pathways to develop targeted clinical interventions to prevent chronic health and mental diseases.
Kamelia Klejc, MS is a current medical student at the Florida State University College of Medicine. She obtained her Master’s of Science from FSU where she analyzed the effects of ketogenic nutrition on pain in older adults. Her interests include lifestyle interventions on health outcomes, primary care, and social determinants of health.