Dr. Joseph (An Thanh) Vu is an MR Physicist specializing in ultra-high field (UHF), high spatiotemporal resolution neuroimaging. Dr. Vu obtained his PhD from the joint UC Berkeley – UCSF Bioengineering graduate program in 2011. He served as a research associate in Radiology at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Magnetic Resonance Research from 2012-2015, where he developed advanced fMRI and dMRI methods for the 7T Human Connectome Project. Subsequently as a senior research scientist at Advanced MRI Technologies, Dr. Vu continued to advance the field of high spatiotemporal resolution fMRI through multiple BRAIN Initiative projects. In 2016, Dr. Vu took on the roles of physicist in Radiology at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Health Care System (SFVAHCS) and Technical Director for the Center for Imaging of Neurodegenerative Diseases (CIND) at the SFVAHCS, where he developed internationally patent pending fMRI technology, spear headed major upgrades and expansions of the 7T MRI system at the SFVAHCS, and serves on both the UCSF and VA MRI Safety Committees. In March of 2019, Dr. Vu accepted the position of assistant adjunct professor in the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging at UCSF and at the SFVAHCS, where he serves as Director of Advanced Imaging Technologies for the Veteran Affairs Advanced Imaging Research Center (VAARC).

Dr. Ford and her colleagues at the Brain Imaging and EEG Lab at SFVAMC record brain signals that accompany self-initiated actions from patients with schizophrenia and from healthy controls. These signals are an "early warning system" that tell a person the resulting sensations are self-generated. This signal from the brain may ultimately give biological reality to the phenomenon of auditory hallucinations.

Dr. Cobert is an anesthesiologist and intensivist at the SFVAHCS. He trained in Internal Medicine, Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine. His research interests include palliative care in the intensive care unit (ICU), ICU survivorship and Post-Intensive Care Syndrome (PICS), language and clinician reflexivity in medical notes and natural language processing (NLP) and language models in the clinical setting. His lab focuses on the study of narrative elements, bias, stigmatizing language and subjectivity in clinical notes and how this impacts clinician behavior. He is the cofounder of the Collaborative for Advanced Illness Research and Education (CAIRE) which focuses on improving primary palliative care delivery, research and educational opportunities at UCSF. His mentees include multiple medical students, Internal Medicine housestaff, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine fellows, masters students.

Dr. Seal is a primary care internist and Chief of the Integrative Health Service for the SFVAHCS. She directs the Integrated Care Clinic for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans, the Integrated Pain Team Clinic and the roll-out of Complimentary and Integrative Health (CIH) services for veterans and VA staff. She also conducts health services and clinical trials research to study novel interventions to improve care for veterans with chronic pain, opioid misuse and PTSD.

Kathleen Sarmiento is an Associate Professor of Medicine, Director of the Sleep Program at the VA San Francisco Health Care System, VISN 21 Specialty Care Sleep Clinical Resource Hub Director, and National Lead for VHA TeleSleep. Her research focuses on improving access to sleep care for both rural and urban Veterans by leveraging telehealth and hub-spoke partnerships, and by de-implementing low-value visits. Her current grant will assess the value of home sleep apnea testing in a broad range of comorbidities and pre-test risk for OSA, as well as study the impact of an initial consultation before sleep testing on adherence to therapy, patient satisfaction, and patient outcomes. Through the national implementation of VA’s TeleSleep Program, a variety of synchronous and asynchronous modalities to improve access, quality, and timeliness of care are evaluated. Dr. Sarmiento is also engaged in clinical research evaluating web-based care for sleep apnea, hospital to home transitions and the benefit of non-invasive ventilation on morbidity and mortality in patients with chronic respiratory failure, and remote monitoring of patients with ALS using telehealth. She is an innovator and early adopter of technology, seeking to incorporate AI and machine learning into care delivery models to improve practice efficiency and patient outcomes.