REIMAGINE Team

Executive Director

Gabriel Schnickel MD, MPH
Gabriel Schnickel, MD, MPH, is a professor of surgery and the surgical director of liver transplantation at UC San Diego. He is the founder of REIMAGINE and serves as the executive director.

Leila Adler, MA

Leila Adler, MA, joins the REIMAGINE Center with over 15 years of experience in program management, strategic planning, and research funding partnerships. Most recently, she served as Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations at UC San Diego, where she worked closely with faculty and researchers to secure prestigious and highly competitive private foundation funding. Before that, Leila spent her career in Washington, D.C., at leading research institutions. As Deputy Director of the Bridging the Gap Project at American University, she designed and implemented strategic initiatives to help faculty expand the impact of their research.

Leila holds a BA in political science from UC Berkeley and a master’s in international affairs from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. She lives in North County with her husband, Tim, their two sons, Zia and Luke, and their rescue dog, Finn.

Aleah Brubaker, MD, PhD
Aleah Brubaker, MD, PhD, is an assistant professor of surgery and a transplant surgeon-scientist. Her research focuses on the emerging field of perfusion technologies in abdominal transplant recipients and its potential to revolutionize the organ donation landscape. She founded the CONCORD consortium to collect detailed outcomes data for abdominal allografts after normothermic regional perfusion (NRP), allowing her to collaborate with other leaders in perfusion modalities and develop ongoing research that will broadly benefit the transplant community.

Nancy Marlin, PhD
Nancy Marlin, PhD, is a professor and provost emerita of San Diego State University. In 2018, she received a pre-emptive kidney transplant from a living donor and, since then, has become involved with policy and advocacy regarding living donation. Marlin serves on the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) Living Donor Committee and has been a member of OPTN subcommittees addressing international living donors and psychosocial evaluation of living donors. Within the American Society of Transplantation, she has been a member of the Living Donor Communities of Practice conference on expanding paired exchange and serves on the Living Donor Incentives Task Force. Based on her experience in seeking a living donor, Marlin teaches a monthly class at her transplant center on “How to Find a Living Donor.” She has been an invited speaker and legislative advocate for the National Kidney Foundation and Polycystic Kidney Disease Foundation.

Sheri Hartman PhD
Sheri Hartman, PhD, is a professor and an assistant dean of research for the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health & Human Longevity Science. Hartman is a clinical psychologist with extensive training and experience promoting health behavior change. Her research focuses on physical activity, sedentary behavior, weight loss, cognitive functioning and quality of life among cancer survivors as well as a variety of other patient and under-served populations.

Mita Shah, MD
Mita Shah, MD, is a professor of clinical medicine in the Department of Nephrology. She is the medical director for the kidney transplant program and serves as medical director for Lifesharing, the Organ Procurement Organization (OPO) for San Diego and Imperial Counties.

Fadel Zeidan, PhD

Fadel Zeidan, PhD, is a professor of anesthesiology at UC San Diego and endowed professor of compassion research at the T. Denny Sanford Institute for Empathy & Compassion. He is also co-founder and neuroscience director of the newly formed UC San Diego Psychedelic Health and Research Initiative. His research is focused on determining the active mechanisms that mediate the relationship between self-regulatory practices and health. Zeidanlab.com