Affiliated UCSD faculty cross-cut campus to include the Division of Social Sciences, School of Medicine, Rady School of Management, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Global Health Institute, QualComm Institute, Global Health Program, Center for Global Justice, Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies, and the Center for Mental Health Technology.
MD, Professor of Psychiatry and the Director of the Cognitive Assessment and Risk Evaluation (CARE) Program
Dr. Kristin Cadenhead is a Professor of Psychiatry at University of California San Diego and an attending physician at the UCSD Medical Center. She is the Director of the Cognitive Assessment and Risk Evaluation (CARE) Program, a research and clinical program that focuses on early identification, intervention and prevention of serious mental illness. She received her BA degree in Biology/Psychology from Rice University in Houston, Texas. She then earned her medical degree from the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. She completed her residency in Psychiatry and Fellowship in Schizophrenia research at UCSD.
PhD, Professor of Psychiatry, Director of the Mental Health in Aging Unit in the Desert-Pacific Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center, Director of the Center for Empathy and Compassion Training in Medical Education in the T. Denny Sanford Institute for Empathy and Compassion
Lisa T. Eyler, PhD is Professor of Psychiatry at UC San Diego and Director of the Mental Health in Aging Unit in the Desert-Pacific Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center at the VA San Diego Healthcare System. She also directs theCenter for Empathy and Compassion Training in Medical Education in the T. Denny Sanford Institute for Empathy and Compassion. She leads the Department of Psychiatry Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Action Council. Dr. Eyler's research focuses on understanding individual differences in cognitive and emotional functioning using neurobiological measures including structural and functional brain imaging. She contributes to several global collaborative initiatives focused on bipolar disorder, including the ENIGMA Bipolar Working Group to analyze neuroimaging data, the Global Aging and Geriatric Experiments in Bipolar Disorder (GAGE-BD) project to examine archival data on late-life bipolar disorder, and the International Consortium Investigating Neurocognition in Bipolar Disorder (ICONIC-BD) which investigates cognitive performance in samples from around the world. She is also interested in promoting educational initiatives world-wide to enhance empathy and compassion among clinical learners.
MD, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Director of Mental Health Services, Owen Clinic
Dr. Grelotti received his MD from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and thereafter residency training at Harvard Medical School in the Massachusetts General Hospital and McLean Hospital adult psychiatry and child psychiatry residency training programs. He was a Global Mental Health Delivery Fellow at Harvard Medical School, working in Haiti and South Africa to build mental health services in these resource-limited settings. His primary interests are in HIV psychiatry, global mental health, and medicinal cannabis.
PhD, MBA, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Founding Co-Director of the Neural Engineering and Translation Labs (NEATLabs), Advisory Board for Global Health Program
Dr. Mishra is a computational and translational neuroscientist with expertise in attention, learning and brain plasticity. Her research focuses on engineering and translation of cognitive neuro-technologies from the lab to the community, in both local and global settings. She has conducted mental health research with video games, cognitive training, mindfulness-based self-regulation training, brain computer interfaces and
MD, Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry
Dr. Desiree Shapiro is an Associate Clinical Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at University of California, San Diego. Dr. Shapiro received her medical degree from UCSD School of Medicine and she completed her residency in adult psychiatry at UCSD. She served as Executive Chief Fellow for the UCSD Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship before becoming an attending on the inpatient Rady Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Services (CAPS) Unit, Rady Crisis Stabilization Unit, and in the Rady Emergency Room. She has done research in healthy behavior change, psychopharmacology, and physical activity in youth. Dr. Shapiro is passionate about promoting wellness in local schools and has partnered with La Jolla Country Day School on their school wide wellness initiative. She recently was funded to create the CAP Inclusive Excellence Program, an initiative to grow a more inclusive workforce of pediatric psychiatrists in our region. Dr. Shapiro is passionate about training the next generation of child and adolescent psychiatrists, providing education about mental health and wellness, collaborating with school and community partners, and promoting the well-being of patients, families, medical professionals, and our communities.
PhD, Harold Simon Distinguished Professor and Associate Dean of Global Health Sciences, Co-Director, Center for Innovative Phage Applications and Therapeutics (IPATH) and International Core of the San Diego Center for AIDS Research
Dr. Strathdee is an infectious disease epidemiologist who has spent the last two decades focusing on HIV prevention in underserved, marginalized populations in developed and developing countries, including people who inject drugs and sex workers. In the last decade, she has published over 700 peer-reviewed publications on HIV prevention and the natural history of HIV and related infections and the evaluation of interventions to reduce harms among substance using populations. She is also actively involved in the leadership of IPATH, which uses phage therapy to treat multi-drug resistant bacterial infections and the international core of the SD CFAR.
PhD, MPH, MS, Professor and Dean of the University of California San Diego Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science, with a joint appointment in the Department of Medicine Division of Nephrology and Hypertension & Director of the UCSD Center of Excellence in Health Promotion and Equity
Dr. Anderson’s research is focused on nutrition and chronic disease prevention with a goal of equitably improving human health; including development of nutrition policy strategies for prevention of cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney disease, and diet-related cancers; and promotion of health behavior and elimination of health disparities by personal and environmental factors. Dr. Anderson has served on the Pan American Health Organization’s Technical Advisory Group on Cardiovascular Disease Prevention through Dietary Salt Reduction, the National Academy of Medicine’s Food and Nutrition Board, and the 2015 US Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. She is the Chair of the American Heart Association (AHA) Council of Epidemiology and Prevention and immediate past Chair of the AHA nutrition committee. She currently serves on the editorial board of Circulation. Dr. Anderson was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Medicine in 2016.
Select publications for Dean Anderson can be found here.
MD, PhD, MPH, Associate Professor at Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science at the University of California San Diego, Division Lead of the Climate and Environmental Health Teaching Division, Director of the Climate and Environmental Health Research Program
His main research interests involve understanding the role of environmental contaminants on brain development and metabolic alterations of children and adults, with ongoing research in Ecuador.
Dr. Suarez’s is the lead of the Teaching Division of Climate and Environmental Health and the director of the Research Program in Climate and Environmental Health within the H. Wertheim School of Public Health at UCSD. His research focuses on understanding the role of environmental contaminants, primarily pesticides and persistent organic pollutants, on adult cardiovascular/metabolic health and on child development including neurocognitive, respiratory, endocrine, inflammatory, hepatic and other physiologic outcomes. Dr. Suarez is PI on several NIH and foundation grants and conducts research in the US and Latin America. He is PI and founder of the Study of Secondary Exposures to Pesticides among Children and Adolescents (ESPINA) study, based in Ecuador, which is one of the longest running longitudinal cohorts evaluating the effects of pesticides on child development. He also leads work evaluating dietary interventions to enhance human excretion of persistent pollutants, and the development of personal cooling technology to improve human adaptation to heatwaves, among others. Dr. Suarez is a Governor appointee to the Scientific Guidance Panel for the California Environmental Contaminants Biomonitoring Program.
Thomas J. Csordas is Distinguished Professor in the Department of Anthropology at UC San Diego, where he holds the Dr. James Y. Chan Presidential Chair in Global Health. He is Founding Director of the Global Health Program and Director of the UCSD Global Health Institute. His research interests include medical and psychological anthropology, global mental health, comparative religion, cultural phenomenology and embodiment, globalization and social change, and language and culture. He has conducted ethnographic research on the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, healing in the Navajo Nation, adolescent psychiatric patients in New Mexico, Catholic exorcism in the United States and Italy, and the health of refugees on the US-Mexico border. He is author of The Sacred Self (1994); Embodiment and Experience (1994); Language, Charisma,and Creativity (1997); Body/Meaning/Healing (2002); Transnational Transcendence (2009); Engaging Evil (with William C. Olsen, 2019); Troubled in the Land of Enchantment (with Janis H. Jenkins, 2020).
PhD, Professor of Political Science, Founding Director for the Center on Global Justice
Fonna Forman is Professor of Political Science and Founding Director of the Center on Global Justice at UC San Diego, focused on community-based solutions to poverty and environmental crisis. Her research engages the intersection of ethics, urban policy and the city – with a special focus on climate justice, borders and migration, and equitable urbanization. She was VIce-Chair of the University of California’s 2015 Bending the Curve report on climate change solutions; and currently serves as Co-Chair of the University of California’s Global Climate Leadership Council. She partners closely with UC San Diego Professor Teddy Cruz, leading a variety of urban research and civic interventions in the San Diego-Tijuana border region and beyond, including the UCSD Community Stations, a network of field stations across the border region designed for engaged research and teaching on community-based solutions to poverty and environmental crisis.
PhD, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Institute of the Americas Endowed Chair for Inter-American Affairs
Dr. Mares’s principal research and teaching interests include Latin American energy politics, the political economy of drug policy, defense policy, civil-military relations and the use of photographic imagery in politics. He is the author or editor of ten books and his publications have appeared in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian and Chinese in journals such as Comparative Politics, International Organization, International Interactions, Security Studies, Latin American Research Review, Foro Internacional, Estudios Internacionales and Fuerzas Armadas y Sociedad.
PhD, Associate Professor of Anthropology
Dr. Amy Non is a genetic anthropologist with an interest in the genetic and sociocultural contributors to racial and social inequalities in health. Her research focus is to understand how social experiences can become biologically embedded to affect health throughout the life course, and potentially contribute to racial disparities in health. Her ongoing projects include investigation of biological embedding of stress in Latina immigrant mothers and children, examination of epigenetic effects of stress in developing human neurons, microRNA in longitudinal breast milk, and racial bias in spirometry and disparities in lung function.
PhD, Professor and Chair of Anthropology, Advisory Board for Global Health Program
Dr. Parish has a strong interest in the intersection of global health, climate change, and sustainability—especially in India, Nepal, and the Himalaya. This reflects interests in nature, culture, and the ethics of humanity’s relationship to the natural world and cultural diversity. His research has used person-centered ethnography to understand the role of culture in the development of moral consciousness, to examine the experience of inequality as it shapes the formation of self and culture in caste society, and to explore the subjectivity of suffering.
Ph.D., Lecturer for the Global Health Program
Dr. Olga Olivas Hernández is an anthropologist with a particular research expertise on new spiritualities, mental health and migration, substance use/abuse, treatment, and healing systems in the cultural context. She has a Ph.D. in Social Sciences with an emphasis in Social Anthropology from CIESAS Occidente. Recent research collaborations include: Embodiment and Subjectivity in Religious Treatments for drug abuse; Life trajectories and substance abuse among Mexican Migrants in the U.S.-Mexico Border; and Cultural Perceptions of Emotional Wellbeing and Patterns of Help-Seeking in Tijuana, Mexico. Currently, she is researching Health and Migration Trajectories among asylum seekers stranded in mobility in Northern Mexico. Some of her more recent publications are:
PhD, Professor of Anthropology and of the Neuroscience Graduate Program, Director of Laboratory for Human Comparative Neuroanatomy
Dr. Semendferi’s research focuses on the comparative neuroanatomy of the human brain explores neural systems involved in complex cognitive and emotional processes in humans, apes and other primates, as well as in human mental disorders.
Dr. Varma is a medical and cultural anthropologist working on questions of violence, medicine, psychiatry, and politics as they pertain to Indian-controlled Kashmir and South Asia more generally. Varma teaches courses
Professor of Visual Arts, Director of Urban Research, Center on Global Justice
Dr. Teddy Cruz is recognized internationally for his urban and architectural research of the Tijuana-San Diego border, advancing border immigrant neighborhoods as sites of cultural production, from which to rethink urban policy, affordable housing and civic infrastructure. His investigation of this geography of conflict has inspired a practice and pedagogy that emerges from the particularities of this bicultural territory and the integration of theoretical research, pedagogy and design production. With Political Science Professor Fonna Forman, he co-directs the UCSD Community Stations, located in marginalized communities across the border region.
PhD, Victor C. Alderson Professor of Applied Ocean Sciences, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, Director of Atmospheric Sciences, and Chair of the Project Surya Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Ramanathan is the Frieman endowed presidential chair Emeritus professor for climate sustainability at the University of California at San Diego and Cornell Climate Solutions Scholar, Cornell University. He served as the science advisor for Pope Francis' Holy See delegation to the UN's 2015 Paris climate summit. He leads University of California's Bending the Curve: Climate solutions education protocol, taught at many campuses around the world. He now leads the Climate Resilience project at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences at the Vatican. He is the recipient of numerous global awards including the prestigious 2021 Blue Planet Prize.
He discovered the greenhouse effect of chlorofulorocarbons and other heat trapping pollutants gases. His findings on Non-CO2 global warming gases and black carbon soot have led to several successful climate mitigation actions worldwide, including the formation of Climate and Clean Air Coalition by the United Nations to mitigate short lived climate pollutants. He was Listed as Foreign Policy Magazine’s Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2014 and named 2013 Champion of the Earth Laureate for the Science and Innovation category, by the United Nations Environment Program.. He is elected to the Pontifical Academy of Science (council member); Royal Swedish Academy of Science, the US National Academy of Science and the World Academy of Sciences.
PhD, Assistant Professor on Biological, Ecological and Human Adaptations to Climate Change at the Department of Anthropology and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Dr. Rivera-Collazo is an environmental archaeologist specializing on geoarchaeology, archaeomalacology, coastal and marine processes, maritime culture and climate change, with regional interests in Puerto Rico, the Caribbean Basin and the Neotropics (Pan Caribbean region); Israel and the eastern Mediterranean. Her research focuses on the effect that human activity has over island ecosystems through time, as well as how have people responded to climatic and environmental change in the past. Dr. Rivera-Collazo’s work focuses on resilience and adaptation, investigating what decisions enhance or reduce adaptive success. Taking an applied approach, Dr. Rivera-Collazo also works with local communities in the quest for understanding the current and expected impacts of climate change, including threats to coastal heritage.