Dr. Kim was the first researcher to report an association between fractures of the knee joint and a form of programmed cell death known as apoptosis. A second research front in Dr. Kim's lab is of critical importance to Veterans: repairing nerve damage from bullet and bomb wounds, which frequently cause long-term functional damage to injured limbs when damaged nerve segments grow back improperly or not at all. This research could result in repair methods that are superior to current conventional techniques.

Irina Strigo, Ph.D. is Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UCSF and Research Biologist at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. She received her research training from Columbia University (Radiology), Barrow Neurological Institute (Neurosurgery) and UC San Diego (Psychiatry). She received her Ph.D. and B.Sc. in Physiology from McGill University, Montreal, Canada.

Our group investigates brain networks that process pain and emotion in individuals with depressive, anxiety disorders, chronic pain and traumatic brain injury. In addition, we seek to understand how individual differences in pain response relate to pain chronification. This research has been funded by the National Alliance for Research in Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD), National Institute of Health (NIH), the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and Painless Research Foundation.

Dr. Jeffrey M. Zimmet is a cardiologist in San Francisco, California and is affiliated with multiple hospitals in the area, including UCSF Health-UCSF Medical Center and San Francisco Veterans Affairs Health Care System. He received his medical degree from Boston University School of Medicine and has been in practice for more than 20 years.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Jennifer+Manuel

Dr. Liu's research endeavors to improve the recovery of function after ischemic stroke and brain injuries, in the context of neural regeneration and vascular remodeling. The Liu lab employs multidisciplinary approaches to dissect the mechanisms underlying the poor stroke outcome and impaired neural regeneration of mice with metabolic syndrome, including optical coherence tomography imaging, Multiphoton Laser Scanning Microscopy imaging, transcriptome profiling, electrophysiology and connectome.