Experts Guide

Gum focuses on improving well-being for older adults and medical patients through applied research in behavioral health services and trauma-informed care in medical and aging service settings.

Corbin studies gerontology and social work and can discuss transitions common to aging, including how they may impact how older adults view and navigate the holiday season. She has helped develop the geriatric treatment program at HCA West Tampa Hospital, where she works PRN as a therapist. She has vocational experience within adolescent group homes, the Department of Children and Families and inpatient/outpatient mental health settings.

Curtis is director of the Cognition, Aging, Sleep, and Health (CASH) Lab at the USF College of Nursing and an expert in sleep health and sleep and cognition. Her current research explores how brain training affects sleep, thinking and related abilities. It also looks at differences between men and women, as well as other factors like pain and medication, that can influence sleep and mental function at different stages of life.

Russ' research focuses on skeletal muscle physiology with an emphasis on healthy aging and muscle fatigue in clinical populations, ranging from HIV to low-back pain. His lab uses methods ranging from function testing to molecular biology to evaluate muscle function at the organism, organ, tissue, cell and molecular levels in human and animal models.

Cohen is an expert on lethal violence, family caregiving, Alzheimer's Disease, dementia, aging and mental health, elder abuse and murder-suicide.

Bugos directs the NEA Funded Research Lab, Cognition and Coordination in Music Across the Lifespan (CALM Lab) where she mentors interdisciplinary undergraduate and graduate students from across the USF campus. Her research examines the neurological basis for music perception and cognition with regard to human development, lifelong learning and cognitive transfer. Her interests have led to the development of new music education programs for healthy and clinical populations of children (Multimodal Music Training) and for adults (Keys to Staying Sharp; Piano for Parkinson’s).

O’Brien’s research focuses on the fundamental mechanisms behind perception, attention and decision-making in healthy adults and in changes to these systems during normal and abnormal aging. She is part of teams that have received more than $68 million in grant funding to study Alzheimer's disease in older adults.

Walton is an expert in auditory physiology, aging and hearing loss and neural plasticity. His research focuses on identifying neurons within the auditory pathway specialized for extracting rapid acoustic events, elucidating age-related changes in neural processing of complex auditory signals presented in degraded acoustic environments and neural plasticity following exposure to an enriched auditory environment in a mouse model of congenital hearing loss.

Park's research focuses on minority aging, Alzheimer's Disease, social isolation and mental health.