Jessica Nielson and Julie Megler
Jessica Nielson, PhD, received her BS in biology from Cal Poly Pomona in 2003, and her PhD in anatomy and neurobiology from the University of California, Irvine, in 2010. During her doctoral work she resolved a century-old controversy regarding the fate of the corticospinal tract following spinal cord injury, definitively demonstrating that this important motor pathway survives injury and is available in chronic cases for therapeutic interventions to promote regeneration and functional recovery. She joined the Brain and Spinal Injury Center at University of California San Francisco in 2011 as a postdoctoral scholar, where she has been developing a novel bioinformatics approach to characterize syndromic features of spinal cord injury, with future plans to apply this approach to traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Julie Megler, MSN, NP-BC, is a licensed nurse practitioner in both psychiatry and family practice. In 2009, she received her Master’s of Science in nursing from the University of Miami, Florida. In 2010, she began working at an emergency room in Detroit, Michigan. Her ER experience illustrated for Julie the gap between medical and psychiatric care, and how the mind/body connection is often ignored, leading her to develop a practice that integrates medicine and mental health for more effective treatment. In 2012, she completed her post-Master’s certificate as a psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner at the University of California, San Francisco. Julie is now working for the San Francisco Veteran’s Medical Center (SFVMC). At the SFVMC, she is seeing dual diagnosis psychiatric patients. Julie has particular interest in veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and the implications of ayahuasca for PTSD treatment.