1. Albert Lai, MD PhD

2. Professor In Residence
3. Neuro-oncology Program
4. Department of Neurology

I am a clinician-scientist committed to the direct care of brain cancer patients and the improvement of treatment outcomes through translational and basic research. I have been committed to a career in academic medicine and biomedical research since entering the NIH Medical Scientist Training Program at University of California at San Diego. My dissertation research was conducted at the Salk Institute with the late Ian Trowbridge. After completing both Neurology Residency and Neuro-oncology Fellowship (with Tim Cloughesy) training at UCLA, I joined the UCLA Neurology faculty in 2005. Through funding from the American Brain Tumor Association (Basic Research Fellowship), Art of the Brain, Cancer Center of Santa Barbara and NIH (K08), I have been able to establish a translational brain cancer research laboratory that focuses on correlating molecular analysis of glioma patient tumor tissues with clinical phenotype. In particular, my laboratory has developed expertise with methylation profiling of patient tissues. Complementing my laboratory research, I am an active clinician with a practice that focuses on primary brain tumors. As a clinician/scientist interested in improving treatment outcomes for patients with malignant gliomas, I approach each patient as an opportunity to correlate clinical observations with molecular tumor characterization. Because of the molecular diversity and the wide variation of clinical response in malignant glioma patients, this approach has tremendous importance and immediacy in the development of biomarkers and personalized therapeutics.

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• Tie Li, MD PhD

• Senior Lab Technician
• Inner Mongolia Medical College, M.D.
• Beijing Medical University, Ph.D. - Physiology

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• Sean Thomas Pianka

• MD-PhD Candidate
• UCLA Interdepartmental PhD Program for Neuroscience since 2017
• UCLA Medical Scientist Training Program since 2015
• Graduated Pomona College with honors in 2014

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• Blaine Eldred

• Lab Manager
• Graduated from UCLA Undergraduate with Major in Neuroscience and Minor in Biomedical Research in 2019

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• Stephanie Pan

• Undergraduate Researcher
• Biochemisty, Class of 2021

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• Rose Rao

• Undergraduate Researcher
• Computer Science and Computational and Systems Biology, Class of 2022

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• Ishan Saha

• Undergraduate Researcher
• Psychobiology, Class of 2021

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• Haowen Liang

• Undergraduate Researcher
• Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Class of 2021

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• Keng Lam, MD

• Kaiser Permanente, Neurology Resident
• UC Davis School of Medicine, M.D.
• Graduated from UC Berkeley Undergraduate