Mohammad Nafeli Shahrestani, MD

Dr. Nafeli was born in Iran, and moved to Rome, Italy at age 19 to pursue a medical education. Driven by his keen interest in the study of the aging brain and neurodegeneration, in his last year of medical school, he was sent to the University of Maryland, Baltimore, as a research scholar, where he completed his M.D.  graduation thesis about Alzheimer’s Disease. A few months after graduating summa cum laude from Tor Vergata University of Rome, he joined the Neurology Department at the University of Miami as a postdoctoral research scholar. He is in the postdoctoral T32 mentored research training program: CrossDisciplinary Research Opportunity for Training in AD/ADRD Science: CrossROADS. Under the leadership of Dr. Tatjana Rundek, he is researching Vascular Contributions to Cognitive Impairment and Dementia (VCID), investigating how compromise in cardiovascular system mechanisms and blood abnormalities may contribute to the development of diseases that cause cognitive decline.

Taylor Ariko

Taylor Ariko received her BS in Chemical Engineering with a major in Biomedical Engineering at FAMU-FSU College of Engineering at Florida State University, graduating with Magna Cum Laude and Honors in the Major. She worked at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (MagLab) during her junior and senior year under the mentorship of Dr. Samuel C. Grant PhD, gaining experience in high-field MR scanning and image processing. During her time at the MagLab, Taylor was involved in the 2019 Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program and defended an Undergraduate Honors Thesis on Diffusion Tensor Imaging of Neural Structural Connectivity in a Transgenic Model of Alzheimer’s Disease and Ischemic Stroke Recovery. Taylor is currently a Dean’s fellow in the Biomedical Engineering PhD program at the University of Miami. She is working under the mentorship of Dr. Tatjana Rundek MD, PhD studying Carotid Ultrasound markers of Atherosclerosis in patients at risk of Alzheimer’s from the 1Florida Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. Her long-term goal is to utilize imaging techniques to study biomarkers of neurodegenerative diseases.