People

In 2011, Yi Li obtained her MD from Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA, followed by a one-year internship at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. In 2016, she completed a four-year Diagnostic Radiology residency at UCSF. Li was a 2016 recipient of the Margulis Society Outstanding Resident Research Award for her excellence in research during residency. She served as chief fellow in Neuroradiology, completing her neuroradiology fellowship in 2017 and clinical instructorship in 2018.

Dr. Ostrem has expertise in Maternal-Fetal and Pediatric Neurology and treats babies, children, young adults, and pregnant patients with neurological symptoms and disorders. She completed her M.D. and Ph.D. at UCSF followed by residency in Pediatric Neurology in the Mass General Brigham (Partners Neurology) Program in Boston, Massachusetts, and clinical fellowship in Maternal-Fetal Neurology at Brigham and Women's Hospital. She also completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Dr. Paola Arlotta at Harvard.

My research centers on vascular mechanisms of neurological disease with a particular focus on neonatal brain injury. Blood vessels become damaged in the injured or diseased brain which allows proteins from the blood to leak into the nervous system. My work seeks to identify new therapies for neurological diseases by targeting toxic blood proteins and inflammatory signals at the blood-brain interface that block normal brain development and repair.

Dr. Shabnam Peyvandi is a pediatric cardiologist that specializes in fetal diagnosis and management of congenital heart disease. Her main research interest is identifying fetal markers of neurodevelopmental outcomes in fetuses with critical CHD. Along with collaborators, she conducts a clinical research program times at utilizing neuroimaging and other tools to understand fetal and neonatal cerebral regulation and oxygenation in the setting of CHD with a focus on longitudinal outcomes.

Dr. Piao is a physician-scientist with a focus in both neonatology and developmental neuroscience. She received her PhD with Alan Bernstein from University of Toronto, before completing her Pediatric residency at NYU and Neonatology fellowship as well as a post-doctoral fellowship with Chris Walsh at Harvard Medical School. Working in neonatal intensive care unit and laboratory, Dr. Piao’s career follows the bedside-to-bench-to-bedside paradigm.

Dr. Samuel J. Pleasure is a neurologist who specializes in caring for patients with multiple sclerosis. He also has expertise in caring for patients with epilepsy as well as years of experience in managing a variety of neurological conditions in both clinic and hospital settings.

Pleasure has two main areas of inquiry for his research. He studies processes that regulate early brain development in both normal and diseased situations. He also studies autoimmune forms of meningoencephalitis, where inflammation in specific brain areas causes severe neurologic dysfunction.

Dr. Elizabeth E. Rogers is a neonatologist and Director of the ROOTS Small Baby Programs in the Intensive Care Nursery at UCSF Mission Bay. She specializes in neuroprotective care and neurodevelopmental outcomes for critically ill infants in the intensive care nursery of UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital. Her research focuses on developmental and social-behavioral outcomes for these infants and aims to identify protective and risk factors. She also serves as the Associate Vice Chair for Faculty Development and the Chief Experience Officer in the Department of Pediatrics.