Sarah Kaufman

Sarah Kaufman, MD, PhD is an Assistant Professor in Neurology at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), affiliated with the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences and School of Medicine. She holds dual appointments in the Kampmann Lab and Seeley Lab. Her research focuses on neurodegenerative diseases, particularly mechanisms of selective neuronal vulnerability in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) and tau-related pathologies. She employs CRISPR-based screening and human histopathologic studies to explore pathways governing TDP-43 mislocalization and tau aggregation.

Dr. Kaufman completed her MD/PhD through Washington University in St. Louis (2018) and a Neurology residency at UCSF (2022). She has received NIH grants including F30AG048653 (2014–2018) as Principal Investigator, investigating tau strain propagation. Her work bridges clinical neurology with molecular mechanisms, emphasizing translational research in neurodegeneration.

Her lab collaborates broadly, with projects on tau prion strains, microglial responses to amyloid-β, and early disease biomarkers. Key findings include identifying tau seeding activity patterns in Alzheimer’s and defining tau strain-specific neuropathology. She has published over 20 peer-reviewed articles, with impactful contributions to understanding tauopathies and protein misfolding diseases.