Roybal Directory
NIA Officials
Melissa Riddle, PhD | Health Scientist Administrator, Division of Behavioral and Social Research, NIA
Dr. Melissa Riddle directs an intervention research program focused on behavioral and social interventions relevant to caregiving, including interventions meant to support individuals with cognitive impairment and the people who care for them. This program is situated in the Individual Behavioral Processes Branch, in the Division of Behavioral and Social Research, at the National Institute on Aging (NIA). The program supports rigorous intervention development guided by the NIH Stage Model, with the ultimate goals of developing effective interventions that meet the needs of the individuals and/or communities for which they are developed, and that can be implemented where they are needed.
Theresa Kim, PhD, MS | Program Officer, Division of Behavioral and Social Research, NIA
Dr. Theresa Kim directs an intervention research portfolio focused on organizational and health systems interventions relevant to People Living with Dementia (PLWD) and care partners. The Health Systems Research portfolio includes pragmatic clinical trials and is housed in the Populations Services Processes Unit, in the Division of Behavioral and Social Research, and the National Institute on Aging (NIA). The program supports pragmatic clinical trials guided by the NIH Stage Model with the intention of developing effective interventions that meet the needs of the healthcare system such as health information technology, the workforce, and communities that support PLWD. Dr Kim currently serves the American Statistical Association as the 2027 Chair of the Health Policy Statistics Section.
Roybal Center Principal Investigators
Fang Yu, PhD, RN, GNP-BC, FGSA, FAAN is Professor and Edson Chair in Dementia Translational Nursing Science at the Arizona State University Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation. She received her BS from Peking University Health Science Center and MS as a Gerontological Nurse Practitioner and PhD in gerontological nursing from the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. She completed a 2-year John A. Hartford Claire M. Fagin Building Academic Geriatric Nursing Capacity Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the Pennsylvania State University College of Nursing. She joined the University of Minnesota School of Nursing as an Assistant Professor in 2006 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2012 and Professor in 2018. She held Long-Term Care Professorship and was Chair of the Adult and Gerontological Health Cooperative. Dr. Yu is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of the America and American Academy of Nursing. Her proliferative research focus on developing exercise and cognitive interventions to prevent and treat Alzheimer’s disease. Her research findings have led to many peer-reviewed papers, a book titled Alzheimer's Rx: Aerobic Exercise (Use the Approach AD S.A.F.E.ly™ Protocol to Engage Purposefully), and the FIT-AD™ Certificate Program to increase exercise access for people with AD.
Dr. Niteesh K. Choudhry is a professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and executive director for the Center for Healthcare Delivery Sciences at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where he also a practicing hospitalist. He is also associate director of the Workforce Development Program and co-director of Dissemination and Implementation for Harvard’s National Institutes of Health-funded Clinical and Translational Science Center (Harvard Catalyst). He directs two National Institute on Aging-funded research centers: the Roybal Center for Therapeutic Optimization using Behavioral Science, which is evaluating the impact of principle-driven interventions to improve medication adherence, and the Massachusetts Artificial Intelligence and Technology Center that fosters the development of AI-enhanced technologies to support healthy aging at home for older adults and individuals with Alzheimer’s disease.
Dr. Ian Kronish is a board-certified general internist and associate professor of medicine in the Division of Cardiology and Division of General Medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. He co-directs the Columbia Doctors Hypertension Center (a multidisciplinary center of excellence that provides high-quality care and state-of-the-art diagnostic testing for hypertension) and directs a 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure monitoring service called ActiveBP. Dr. Kronish’s clinical interests include the accurate diagnosis and treatment of hypertension as well as the management of psychological consequences of chronic disease.
Dr. Nathalie Moise is a physician-scientist at the Center for Behavioral Cardiovascular Health, specializing in implementation science. Her research focuses on improving team-based care for chronic cardiovascular disease and mental illness using informatics approaches. She serves as the principal investigator (PI) on several grants, including two R01s funded by NIH and AHRQ. These projects address depression treatment in primary care and post-acute coronary syndrome (ACS) patients, as well as hypertension guideline implementation. Dr. Moise is also a site PI for an NIH/NHLBI study on depression screening after ACS events and Co-investigator on an AHRQ-funded project on ambulatory blood pressure monitoring.
Dr. Manney Carrington Reid's research is directed towards improving the management of pain among older persons. Current projects include testing non-pharmacologic strategies for pain among older persons in both clinical and non-clinical settings, identifying barriers to the use of self-management strategies for pain, and examining optimal strategies for managing pain across ethnically diverse populations of older persons. Additional areas of interest include the epidemiology and treatment of substance use disorders in older persons.
Dr. Elaine Wethington is a professor emeritus of human development at Cornell University. She is also an adjunct research professor in the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan. Since 2003, she has been co-director and director of the Pilot Study Core for the Cornell Edward R. Roybal Center for the Translation of the Behavioral and Social Sciences of Aging, the Translational Research Institute on Pain in Later Life. Her current research focuses on (1) development of efficient measures of toxic stress in families and relationship transitions and (2) exposure to major and minor stressors that can be used in longitudinal studies of the population in surveys, in randomized controlled trials with frequent follow-up, and on smartphones.
Dr. Ken Hepburn is a gerontologist serving as a professor in the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing at Emory University. His area of special interest for the past thirty years has been the development and testing of materials and programs designed to help persons caring for family members with Alzheimer’s Disease.
Dr. Molly Perkins is a gerontologist and medical sociologist with research interests in social determinants of health and disparities, aging in minority and vulnerable populations, functional wellness, and long-term care. She is a National Center on Minority Health Disparities (NIH/NCMHD) Scholar whose primary focus is addressing housing and care needs of disadvantaged elderly populations. She is funded by the Emory Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) for two projects aimed at identifying modifiable social determinants at multiple social-ecological levels associated with health risk behavior and HIV disease severity in HIV-infected older adults. Other research as co-investigator includes funding from NIH/NIA, the Patient-Centered Research Outcome Research Institute (PCORI), the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Office of Rural Health (ORH), and the John A. Hartford Foundation.
Dr. Gaugler’s research examines the sources and effectiveness of long-term care for persons with Alzheimer's disease and other chronic conditions. An applied gerontologist, Dr. Gaugler's interests include Alzheimer's disease and long-term care, the longitudinal ramifications of family care for persons with dementia and other chronic conditions, and the effectiveness of community-based and psychosocial services for older adults with dementia and their caregiving families. Underpinning these substantive areas, Dr. Gaugler also has interests in mixed methods and implementation science.
Dr. Gilmore-Bykovskyi's research focus is to identify and effectively intervene on structural and health system barriers to optimal ADRD-specific care and patient/caregiver-centered outcomes. Much of her research has focused on addressing these priorities among vulnerable populations at high-risk points in the health and care continuum, such as during and after emergency department care and hospitalization and in advanced disease stages. Dr. Gilmore-Bykovskyi has led advances in ADRD health services research that have stewarded new areas of investigation surrounding ADRD-specific care delivery patterns and outcomes and established frameworks to advance research equity and inclusion. She has coauthored over 80 publications and led numerous NIH and foundation-funded projects. Her recent work focuses on identifying and characterizing episodes of paradoxical lucidity in people living with advanced ADRD near end of life.
Dr. Vranceanu is a clinical health psychologist, the David T. Rovee PhD and Joanne V. Rovee Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School, and Founding Director of the Center for Health Outcomes and Interdisciplinary Research at Massachusetts General Hospital. Her research program focuses on improving the lives of older adults, those with serious illness, their family caregivers and dyads in both hospital and community settings, with a strong emphasis on dementia/dementia care and dyadic interventions. She has extensive expertise with the development, testing, and implementation of behavioral and lifestyle interventions using the NIH Stage Model and Science of Behavior Change principles. Dr. Vranceanu has a strong passion for teaching and mentoring and co-leads the Bridge the Gap T32, the Dementia Palliative Care R25, the Research and Education Core of the MGH Dementia Resource Center for Minority Aging Research and the Lifespan Health Track of the MGH Internship in Clinical Psychology.
Dr. Okereke is a board-certified geriatric psychiatrist, Director of Geriatric Psychiatry and Director of the MGH Psychiatry Center for Racial Equity and Justice in the Department of Psychiatry at MGH, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and Associate Professor in Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her research is focused on identifying modifiable risk factors in adverse mental aging, prevention, and community-engaged research for promotion of equity and reduction of health disparities. She has led numerous projects with the support of NIH and other funding sources and has been extensively involved in organizational leadership, community volunteering, and education in ADRD over the past two decades. Dr. Okereke has mentored over 40 faculty members, fellows, residents, interns, and students and provides teaching and mentoring to scholars in psychiatry and/or geriatric mental health (2 T32 and 3 R25 programs).
Dr. Lyons' program of research has focused on how family care dyads manage and cope with illness (including dementia) and the impact on the health of the dyad over time, with particular attention to the interpersonal context. As a gerontologist with expertise in dyadic health science and family care, her research and conceptual innovations over more than two decades culminated in the co-development of the Theory of Dyadic Illness Management. She is also well-versed in dyadic methodologies and the design and testing of dyadic interventions, with particular focus on the role of theory and evaluation of dyadic versus individual benefits of early-phase programs.
Dr. Bhatt received her BS in Physical Therapy from University of Mumbai in 1997 and her Master’s Degree in Rehabilitation Sciences from the University of Manitoba in 2000. She began her doctoral work at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2001 and received her Ph.D. in Movement Sciences/Motor Control in 2006. Dr. Bhatt has also continued her Physical Therapy practice and is a registry staff member at Marianjoy Rehabilitation Hospital. Dr. Bhatt’s research expertise is in field of adaptive perturbation training for fall prevention. Her research involves investigating neuromechanical basis of balance recovery from external perturbations such as slips and trips and subsequently designing intervention paradigms for reducing fall-risk in healthy and pathological populations.
Dr. David Marquez directs the Exercise Psychology Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His work attempts to study and ultimately reduce health disparities.
Dr. Joseph Doyle is a health economist working on measuring returns to health care (i.e., the relationship between healthcare spending and health outcomes, such as mortality and hospital admissions) with the goal of identifying value and waste in the $3 trillion United States healthcare system. Doyle’s work considers spending at the regional level, at the hospital level, and within the hospital by specialists versus general practitioners and for particular procedures and diagnoses. Much of his research discovers settings where differences in treatment are effectively random so as to circumvent confounding factors.
Marcella Alsan is a physician-economist studying the economics of health inequality domestically and internationally. Alsan received a BA from Harvard University, a master’s in public health from Harvard School of Public Health, a MD from Loyola and a PhD in Economics from Harvard. She trained at Brigham and Women’s Hospital Howard Hiatt Global Health Equity Residency Fellowship – then combined the PhD with an Infectious Disease Fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital. Prior to returning to Harvard she was tenured at Stanford. She is Associate Editor at the Journal of Economic Literature and Co-Chair of the Health Care Delivery Initiative of Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at MIT. She is co-recipient of the 2019 Arrow Award for Best Paper in Health Economics, the 2021 William G. Manning Memorial Award for the Best Research in Health Econometrics, recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and was elected into the National Academy of Medicine in 2022. She co-directs the Health Inequality Lab at Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
Dr. Karina Davidson's current research focuses on innovations in personalized trials to manage chronic disease and patient symptoms that incorporate patient preferences and values. She has conducted randomized controlled trials on depression screening and treatments for healthy, hypertensive, and cardiac patients. Dr. Davidson was awarded the National Institutes of Health Transformative R01 grant to accomplish Personalized Trial (N-of-1) clinical trial delivery at the point of care. The vision of this grant is to reimagine the process by which therapies are tested in the clinical encounter to ultimately identify for each patient the therapy that provides maximal benefit and minimal harm.
Dr. Kevin Volpp’s work focuses on developing and testing innovative ways of applying insights from behavioral economics in improving patient health behavior and provider performance to improve value in healthcare delivery. He leads the University of Pennsylvania Leonard Davis Institute’s Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics, one of two National Institutes of Health (NIH) Centers on behavioral economics and health in the United States, and (with Karen Glanz, PhD, MPH) the University of Pennsylvania Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Prevention Research Center. He is also the vice chair for health policy in the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the Perelman School of Medicine.
Dr. Buttenheim’s research is focused on the application of behavioral insights to infectious disease prevention, and to the implementation of evidence-based practices in multiple domains. She has been continuously NIH-funded as PI or MPI since 2013 for projects on Chagas disease prevention, vaccine exemptions, dental behavior change, and mental health services delivery. With a particular interest in behaviorally-informed intervention design, Dr. Buttenheim has published multiple papers demonstrating the potential for behavioral insights and behavioral design to yield high-impact intervention designs.
David E. Conroy, PhD is a Professor of Kinesiology and Program Chair for Applied Exercise Science at the University of Michigan School of Kinesiology. His primary interest involves developing behavioral interventions that target motivational processes to promote health behaviors that enable people to live long, health filled and happy lives. The goal of these interventions is to make healthy lifestyles less effortful and more enjoyable.
Dr. Conroy has published more than 200 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters and is a member of seven journal editorial boards.
Dr. Adam Gazzaley obtained an M.D. and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, completed Neurology residency at the University of Pennsylvania, and postdoctoral training in cognitive neuroscience at University of California, Berkeley. He is now the David Dolby Distinguished Professor in Neurology, Physiology and Psychiatry at University of California, San Francisco and the Founder / Executive Director of Neuroscape, a translational neuroscience center engaged in technology creation and scientific research. He designs and develops novel brain assessment and optimization tools to impact education, wellness, and medicine practices. This novel approach involves the development of custom-designed, closed-loop video games integrated with the latest advancements in software (brain computer interfaces, GPU computing, cloud-based analytics) and hardware (virtual/augmented reality, motion capture, mobile physiological recording devices, transcranial electrical brain stimulation). These technologies are then advanced to rigorous research studies that evaluate their impact on multiple aspects of brain function and physiology. This utilizes a powerful combination of neurophysiological tools, including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).
Peter is a native Californian and completed his undergraduate degree in Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. After a long stint in industry (first basic steel, then pure chocolate), his curiosity turned him toward the study of long-term memory. Peter Wais studied with Dr. John Gabrieli at Stanford University, where he learned about functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), before pursuing his Ph.D. in Psychology under the mentorship of Dr. John Wixted and Dr. Larry Squire at the University of California, San Diego. His thesis examined the roles of medial temporal lobe structures (particularly the hippocampus) in recognition memory. Peter's research interest is the cognitive neuroscience of declarative memory: specifically, how brain networks subserve the mind in reconstruction of long-term memory. His research program is supported by an NIH Pathway to Independence Award.
Dr. Theodore Zanto earned undergraduate degrees in Psychology and another in Physics from the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater. During his undergraduate years, Dr. Zanto also worked full-time as a counselor for people with neurological and psychiatric disorders, which sparked his interest in the complexities of the mind and drove his will to understand how we might better serve afflicted populations. Dr. Zanto obtained a Ph.D. in Complex Systems and Brain Sciences from Florida Atlantic University and then received postdoctoral training in cognitive neuroscience at UCSF. He is currently an Associate Professor in Neurology at UCSF and Director of the Neuroscape Neuroscience Division.
Dr. Zanto utilizes fMRI, EEG and non-invasive brain stimulation techniques (TMS & TES) to study neural mechanisms at the intersection of attention, perception, and memory. He is interested in the role of neural entrainment in cognitive control and how it may be used as a potential therapeutic, particularly in the aging population. Currently, Dr. Zanto is assessing how neural entrainment affects basic cognitive control functions and whether select cognitive functions may be improved through neural entrainment with musical rhythms or with non-invasive rhythmic neurostimulation.
Dr. Jason Doctor is an associate professor and chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management at the University of Southern California’s Sol Price School of Public Policy. He is also the director of Health Informatics at the Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics. His research program centers on decision-making in healthcare and health informatics. Dr. Doctor specializes in behavioral economics and the use of choice architecture to affect policy in health and medicine. In other research, he has studied computational approaches to detecting medical errors and has established methods for representing preferences and values for health.
Dr. Daniella Meeker is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics and Data Science at Yale School of Medicine. Her research focuses on health informatics and behavioral economics. Her work advances the learning health system through data science and pragmatic trials.
Dr. Pickering’s program of research includes four current studies with more than $13 million in funding from the National Institute on Aging. The studies explore how family caregivers of persons with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia provide care, the management of behavioral symptoms of dementia, as well as detection of elder mistreatment by emergency care technicians. She is widely published on related topics, serves as a reviewer on several journals, and is a member of the editorial board for Journal of Gerontological Nursing.
Dr. Cannell an epidemiologist, gerontologist, data scientist, and associate professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center School of Public Health. He is passionate about researching healthy aging and late-life quality of life, and applying that understanding to improving the health of older adults and communities. Specifically, he has published research focusing on the preservation of physical and cognitive function, living and aging with disability, and detecting and preventing elder mistreatment. He also has a passion for data science and digital epidemiology. He’s committed to the idea of learning about – and positively impacting – health outcomes using a data-driven approach. His expertise includes scientific writing – he has published more than 30 peer-reviewed journal articles, two textbook chapters, and one textbook; grant writing – he has secured more than $20 million in grant funding for research; project management – he has been the principal or co-investigator on multiple trials and observational studies in community and healthcare settings; teaching – he has taught 8 different courses at 3 different universities; public speaking – he has given numerous presentations and trainings; and data science – he is fluent in all major statistical programming languages.
Dr. Karina Davidson's current research focuses on innovations in personalized trials to manage chronic disease and patient symptoms that incorporate patient preferences and values. She has conducted randomized controlled trials on depression screening and treatments for healthy, hypertensive, and cardiac patients. Dr. Davidson was awarded the National Institutes of Health Transformative R01 grant to accomplish Personalized Trial (N-of-1) clinical trial delivery at the point of care. The vision of this grant is to reimagine the process by which therapies are tested in the clinical encounter to ultimately identify for each patient the therapy that provides maximal benefit and minimal harm.