Our Team
Faculty
Dr. Katie Page
Dr. Kathleen “Katie” Page is a physician specializing in diabetes and childhood obesity at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC). She is an Associate Professor and practicing Endocrinologist in the Department of Medicine at USC. Dr. Page is also the Co-Director of USC’s Diabetes and Obesity Research Institute (DORI).
Dr. Page has an active research program that seeks to understand the causes of obesity and diabetes so that more effective strategies can be developed for reducing the number of people affected by these health conditions. Her research has been recognized by awards from the Endocrine Society, the American Heart Association and the American Federation for Medical Research. She has received grant funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the American Diabetes Association, the American Heart Association, and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.
Dr. Shan Luo
Dr. Shan Luo is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and Psychology. Dr. Luo received PhD in brain and cognitive sciences and postdoc training in endocrinology at the University of Southern California. Her research interests combine psychology, neuroscience and endocrinology methods to study interactions of metabolic signaling, reward and decision-making processes. She is currently working on her NIH career development award investigating neural mechanisms of overeating among children exposed to maternal diabetes in utero.
Collaborators
Post-Doctoral Fellows & Graduate STudents
Jasmin Alves, PhD
Dr. Jasmin Alves earned her PhD in Medical Biology from the University of Southern California. Her research interest includes identifying health behaviors that ameliorate child health outcomes. Her specific projects include a pilot project awarded from the MADRES center which investigates the role of prenatal exposure to gestational diabetes mellitus on offspring mental health outcomes and how health behaviors such as physical activity and or sleep may mitigate the negative consequences of prenatal exposure to GDM.
Sandhya Prathap, MS
Sandhya completed her undergraduate degree in Neuroscience at the University of Illinois at Urbana, after which she worked as a research assistant at Stanford University under the direction of Dr. Vinod Menon where she studied the neural basis of mathematical learning in children with Autism. She then completed her Masters in Neuroimaging and Informatics at USC, and is currently a 3rd year PhD Student in the Neuroscience Graduate Program. Her research interests include understanding how insulin resistance relates to brain development in children using multimodal neuroimaging techniques.
Staff
Ana Romero, MPH
Ana Romero received both her Bachelors of Science in Health Promotion Disease Prevention (2002) and her Master of Public Health degrees from USC (2004). She is also a licensed nurse (LVN). She is the Program Manager of Gestational Diabetes Offspring and the Brain Response to Sugar Studies, where she plans, organizes and schedules activities to meet project objectives.
Brendan Angelo, MS
Brendan Angelo received his Master of Science from the Neuroimaging and Informatics program through the USC Keck School of Medicine. Since graduating, he has worked as the MRI Technician for the Page Lab imaging studies as well as performing analyses using Freesurfer and FSL on the imaging data collected. For the future, he hopes to return to school to earn a PhD through the Neuroscience Graduate Program at USC.
Alexandro Smith, BA
Alexandro earned his Bachelor of Arts in Psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). He joined the BRANCH Lab in September of 2021. His background includes electroencephalography, attention bias, attention bias modification, mood forecasting, and neural networks and machine learning. Alexandro currently assists the lab in conducting consent calls, administering questionnaires, administering cognitive tasks, assisting OGTT visits, and assisting fMRI visits. He plans on earning a PhD in clinical psychology.
Enrique Trigo
Enrique Trigo is a Clinical Project Manager at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. He earned his medical degree from the Benemerita Universidad de Puebla, Mexico and was a practicing physician in his native country prior to joining the Department of Medicine at USC as a researcher. Enrique performs clinical procedures such as OGTT (Oral Glucose Tolerance Test), IVGTT (Intravenous Glucose Tolerance Test), and Glucose Clamp Testing which is used for quantifying insulin secretion and resistance.
Reina T. Maniego, RN
Reina Maniego is the Registered Nurse at USC’s Diabetes and Obesity Research Institute. She assists on the Brainchild and Brain Response to Sugar Study. She received her ADN from Pierce College. She is currently working on her BSN from the University of Texas Arlington. She has over 10 years of research experience working in different clinical trials units.
Hanyang(Patrick) Liu, MS
Patrick earned his Master of Science in Neuroimaging and Informatics from USC Keck School of Medicine and his Bachelor of Science in Cognitive Science Specialized in Neuroscience from the University of California, San Diego. He joined the BRANCH Lab in September of 2021. Patrick currently works on assisting MRI scan visits, analyzing fMRI scans on functional connectivity, and performing analysis on the MRI scans. He plans to earn a Ph.D. in neuroscience in the future.
Past Students & staff
Hilary Dorton, PhD
Esther Jahng, BA
Sabrina Jones, PhD
Jada Hislop, BS
Tamar Reisman, MD
Alexis Defendis, BA
Xochitl Cordova
Kristen Hardy, BS
Martina Erdstein
James Melrose, PhD
MaryAnn Cabrales, BS
Priyanka Dave
Nate Overholtzer, MS
Alexandra Yunker, BA
