Maria Merino

Maria Merino graduated in June 2022 with her bachelor’s degree in Cognitive & Behavioral Neuroscience from University of California, San Diego and has returned to work at our office as a research assistant. She will also be responsible for pre-screening and identifying participants for our current studies from our internal database, incoming referrals from social media ads, incoming referrals from the community and central recruitment campaigns. She is also assisting with administrative day to day research tasks and working with the study coordinators, other research assistants and director of research to assist with anything they need. She will also assist with administering rater scales on participants for various studies and maintaining and updating electronic regulatory for various studies as well as assisting and overseeing the electronic source for various studies within our CTMS. Maria has been trained on and assist with collecting blood samples from our subjects, processing blood and urine specimen for our studies and assists with vital sign, height and weight, blood pressure and EKG collection and data collection. She has also been trained to administer various cognitive and rater assessments on participants in various studies when she was an intern at UCSD and at SVRC. She started out with us in Mid-January 2021 as an intern who volunteered a few days/hours a week but had to go back in person to UCSD to finish her degree in April 2021. Maria has some clinical research experience first as an intern in 2021 at SVRC and then as an intern at UCSD, she is a certified Medical Assistant as of August 2020. Maria graduated with her High School Diploma from Calexico High School in June 2019 and is fluent (Speaks, reads, and writes) in Spanish.