Leadership

Alison A. Moore, MD, MPH, FACP, AGSF Director, Stein Institute for Research on Aging

Larry L. Hillblom Chair in Geriatric Medicine
Professor of Medicine
Chief, Division of Geriatrics, Gerontology and Palliative Care
University of California San Diego

Alison A. Moore, MD, MPH, FACP, AGSF, is a Professor and Chief of the Division of Geriatrics, Gerontology and Palliative Care and is also Vice Chair of Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in the Department of Medicine. She holds the Larry L. Hillblom Chair in Geriatric Medicine. She is a geriatrician who provides primary and consultative care to older adults and a public health researcher whose work focuses principally on older adults and their use of alcohol and now cannabis. She also has interests in healthy aging, gerontechnology to support independence, health equity, dementia, and aging with HIV. Dr. Moore has a passion for mentorship and in 2019; she was awarded the UC San Diego Health Sciences Faculty Excellence in Mentoring Award. She is a Principal Investigator of an NIA-funded Alzheimer's Disease Resource Center for Minority Aging Research (P30AG059299), a Medical Student Training in Aging Research (MSTAR) Program (T35AG026757), Co-Director of an NIA-funded training program focused on aging women and men (T32AG058529) and has been the recipient of a K24 Midcareer Award in Patient-Oriented Research from NIAAA (K24AA15957). She is an elected member of the Board of Directors of the American Geriatrics Society, a member of the NIA-funded Clinician-Scientists Transdisciplinary Aging Research (Clin-STAR) Mentoring and Career Development Core, and the NIA-funded Research Centers Collaborative Network (RCCN) Executive Committee.

Dr. Moore graduated from Tulane University Schools of Medicine and Public Health and Tropical Medicine with a combined MD/MPH, completed her residency in general internal medicine at Rhode Island Hospital/Brown University, a geriatric medicine fellowship at the VA-UCLA Multicampus Program in Geriatric Medicine and a health services research fellowship at the UCLA Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program. She was a faculty member in the Department of Medicine, Division of Geriatrics at UCLA until her recruitment to UC San Diego in 2016.

Anthony Molina, PhD, Scientific Director, Stein Institute for Research on Aging

We are pleased to announce that Anthony Molina, PhD, Professor of Medicine at UC San Diego will serve as Scientific Director for the Stein Institute. Dr. Molina was a key faculty recruit to the UC San Diego School of Medicine and serves as the Research Chief in the Department of Medicine's Division of Geriatrics, Gerontology, and Palliative Care. In this role, he provides leadership for the research program and is committed to the career development of faculty, fellows, and students who are interested in aging research and the healthcare needs of older adults.

The overarching goal of Dr. Molina's research program is to support healthy aging and to advance precision healthcare for older adults. His team is leading efforts to: 1) understand the factors influencing the cognitive and physical abilities of older adults, 2) develop improved diagnostic/prognostic tools, and 3) identify strategies for promoting healthy longevity. To learn more, please visit The Molina Lab.

Additional academic roles include Founder and Director, San Diego Gerontology Research Collaborative; San Diego Nathan Shock Center, UCSD site PI, and co-Leader of the Human Cell Models Resource; and chartered member of the NIH/NIA Aging Systems and Geriatrics Study Section.

Danielle Glorioso, LCSW Executive Director

Danielle K. Glorioso is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with extensive experience in aging, community health, and clinical research. Since joining UC San Diego in 2001, she has taken on a leadership role as the Executive Director of the Center for Healthy Aging and the Stein Institute for Research on Aging. In this capacity, Ms. Glorioso oversees a wide range of operations including strategic planning, organizational development, community outreach, training, philanthropy, communications, and marketing.

She is also a certified therapist in prolonged grief disorder, specializing in manualized interventions. One of her major accomplishments includes leading the research and development of a licensed, evidence-based six-week program designed to enhance resilience, compassion, and self-compassion among older adults. This intervention, which has undergone nearly a decade of research, has been tested and validated in various community settings, including among older adults in group and individual settings. Through her work, Danielle has made significant contributions to improving the mental health and well-being of older adults

Maria Rosario (Happy) G. Araneta PhD, MPH, Associate Director

Maria Rosario (Happy) G. Araneta PhD, MPH, is Associate Dean of Diversity and Community Partnerships and Professor of Epidemiology in the Department of Family Medicine. Her research interests include maternal and pediatric HIV/AIDS, birth defects, life course exposures, social determinants of health, and health disparities.   She received her BA in Biology from UCSD and her MPH and PhD in Epidemiology from Yale University She is the co-Principal Investigator of the Diabetes Prevention Program Outcomes Study (DPPOS) where UC San Diego is one of 25 participating sites. This longitudinal study, with over 20 years of follow-up, aims to identify the risk factors, mechanisms, and neuropathology of cognitive impairment in persons with pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes, during the current funding cycle.  Dr. Araneta is the PI of the UCSD Filipino Health Study, a longitudinal study of myriad health outcomes among Filipino men and women, co-investigator of the Rancho Bernardo Study, where she leads research on health disparities in osteoporosis, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease among elder White, Filipino and Black women (Health Assessment Study of African-American Women).  She served as a perinatal epidemiologist for the UC San Diego Mother, Child and Adolescent HIV Program, was a co-investigator on maternal and perinatal HIV studies in Mexico, and co-investigator to assess health advantages and disparities in reproductive outcomes by race/ethnicity and nativity. Her prior research included studies on birth defects and adverse reproductive outcomes among Gulf War veterans, HIV transmission through donor artificial insemination, mother-to-child HIV/AIDS transmission, and behavioral intervention studies, including restorative yoga, active stretch and Zumba Fitness to reduce components of the metabolic syndrome.

Dr. Araneta received the 2014 American Diabetes Association’s Vivian Fonseca and Nagendran Family Diabetes Research Award for her research on diabetes among Asians and Pacific Islanders, the Best of Care Award as author of the leading 9 publications in "Diabetes Care" in 2015, and the Inaugural Wing Family Lectureship at the Joslin Diabetes Center, Harvard Medical School in 2017. She was appointed to a four year term on the NIH Advisory Council for the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities from 2015 to 2019, and selected to serve on the NIH Council of Councils from 2018 to 2024.

Sarah Banks, Ph.D. Associate Director

Dr. Sarah Banks is Associate Professor in Neurosciences and Psychiatry, and Director of the Neuropsychology Program of the UCSD Health Center for Brain Health and Memory Disorders. Her research focuses on Alzheimer’s disease, with specific interest in sex differences and how to modify risk. She co-leads three labs: The Human Memory Lab emphasizes neuroimaging and multimodal characterization of Alzheimer’s; The Women Inflammation and Tau Study dedicated to studying risk factors for Alzheimer’s in women (https://www.witsucsd.org); and the Healthy Actions and Lifestyles to Avoid Dementia (HALT-AD) study works to educate and empower participants on avoiding cognitive decline with aging through modifiable factors such as sleep, diet and exercise.  Her clinical program helps with the diagnosis and care of patients with suspected memory conditions. She is also active in teaching and mentoring clinicians and researchers.

Colin A. Depp, Ph.D. Associate Director

As a clinician scientist, Colin Depp’s research has focused on technology-based longitudinal assessment and real-time interventions in mental health, in particular mobile technology applications in serious mental illnesses. Dr. Depp has been fortunate to receive as PI several NIMH and VA grants, each concerned with evaluation of technology enhanced assessments and cognitive and behavioral real-time interventions. He is a co-investigator on several other NIH and foundation-funded projects that deliver multi-component behavioral interventions and incorporate use of technology to assess and modify suicide risk, cognitive ability, and other mental health outcomes. Dr. Depp is also the Director of Research Education and Training at the Clinical and Translational Research Institute at the University of California, San Diego and is active in the role of mentoring clinician scientists in multiple training programs. This position has led him to be increasingly involved in inter-disciplinary education programs, and developing team science in collaboration with clinicians, engineers, and bionformaticians, as well as in creating novel training opportunities in entrepreneurship in medical devices. Clinically, he is a practicing clinical psychologist in the VA San Diego where he mentors and clinically supervises residents, fellows, graduate students, and interns.

Benjamin Smarr, Ph.D. Associate Director

Dr. Smarr's research focuses on time series analysis in biological systems. He emphasizes practical information extraction for translational applications. His background in biological rhythms and neuroendocrinology gives him a rare perspective into the current challenges for data science and engineering on biological systems. His lab develops novel approaches to get more information out of data generated over time and within-individuals. Prof. Smarr's aim is to leverage his expertise in biological dynamics to increase precision in health algorithms, with a special focus on increasing equity of health tech efficacy over diverse populations. Dr. Smarr has received fellowships and funding from NSF, NIH, DoD, and many private partners, and his views have been featured by prominent media outlets, including BBC, Forbes, WIRED, and many others. He received his PhD from University of Washington and was a postdoc at UC Berkeley before joining the Shu Chen-Gene Lay Department of Bioengineering and the Halicioglu Data Science Institute at UCSD.