Faculty & Staff
Jennifer Baughman
Ms. Baughman is a Senior Administrative Analyst and provides oversight of the Center's administrative activities. Her duties include management of all Center funding and development, progress reporting, office management, and assistance with clinic management. She has over 13 years of experience in nonprofit administration.
Christopher Blades
Mr. Blades is a Staff Research Associate/Peer Health Navigator at the Vine Street Clinic. He participates in the recruitment and retention efforts for the NIH/DAIDS funded study (BROTHERS PROJECT - HPTN 061) to determine the Feasibility of Conducting a Community-Level, Multi-Component Intervention for Black men who have sex with men. As a Peer Health Navigator, Mr. Blades meets with study participants to create an action plan to improve their access to care and improve their personal well being.
Miguel Bujanda
Mr. Bujanda is a Staff Research Associate/Peer Health Navigator at the Vine Street Clinic. He participates in the recruitment and retention efforts for the NIH/DAIDS funded study (BROTHERS PROJECT - HPTN 061) to determine the Feasibility of Conducting a Community-Level, Multi-Component Intervention for Black men who have sex with men. As a Peer Health Navigator, Mr. Bujanda meets with study participants to create an action plan to improve their access to care and improve their personal well being.
Lisa Cederblom, MSN, MPH
Ms. Cederblom is a Family Nurse Practitioner at the Vine Street Clinic and focuses on the medical assessments, clinical monitoring and participant safety aspects of the medication development studies in coordination with the study physician.
Pedro Chavez
Mr. Chavez works as a Staff Research Associate and provides laboratory support to the research studies conducted at the Vine Street Clinic. He also provides HIV Risk Assessment Counseling and Testing to research participants and is part of the HIV Prevention Trials Network 061 feasibility and acceptability intervention for black men who have sex with men. Mr. Chavez also participates in community outreach and helps to coordinate recruitment efforts on a variety of our group’s projects.
Christian Fleming
Mr. Fleming is a Staff Research Associate/Peer Health Navigator at the Vine Street Clinic. He participates in the recruitment and retention efforts for the NIH/DAIDS funded study (BROTHERS PROJECT - HPTN 061) to determine the Feasibility of Conducting a Community-Level, Multi-Component Intervention for Black men who have sex with men. As a Peer Health Navigator, Mr. Fleming meets with study participants to create an action plan to improve their access to care and improve their personal well being.
Keith G. Heinzerling, MD, MPH
Dr. Heinzerling is an Assistant Professor in the UCLA Department of Family Medicine, Medical Director of the UCLA Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention and UCLA Substance Abuse Pharmacotherapy Unit. He is also the Principal Investigator of the Center’s Pharmacogenomics of Addiction Medication Development Program. His research and clinical focus is on the discovery, development, and dissemination of anti-addiction medications. He has a primary care-based Addiction Medicine practice at the UCLA Les Kelley Family Health Center. Dr. Heinzerling is a graduate of the Stanford University School of Medicine and the NYU/Bellevue Internal Medicine/Primary Care program, where he was a Chief Resident in Medicine.
Christopher Hucks-Ortiz, MPH
Mr. Hucks-Ortiz is a Project Director and currently works primarily out of our clinical research site on Vine Street in Hollywood where he oversees or consults on multiple studies. He currently manages an NIH/DAIDS funded study (HPTN 061) to determine the Feasibility of Conducting a Community-Level, Multi-Component Intervention for Black men who have sex with men. He also manages a NIDA-funded study (SATH-CAP) to assess the transmission of HIV and other STIs within drug using networks, and from drug users to non-drug users.
Uyen Kao, MPH
Ms. Kao is a Project Director and manages the Los Angeles site for a NIDA funded substudy to determine the long-term health effects of MA use among MSM in the Multicenter Cohort Study (MACS). She also works with the Center for HIV Identification, Prevention, and Treatment Services, providing technical and capacity building assistance to various community-based organizations and health departments. She also manages the UCLA Data and Safety Monitoring Board for Addiction Medicine.
Javier Robles
Mr. Robles is a Staff Research Associate and provides data collection and management services for the Buproprion and Modafinil P-50 studies which are aimed at determining the efficacy of medication based treatment for methamphetamine dependence. His duties include patient recruitment, enrollment, data collection, data management, scheduling, assessment and referrals, along with principal coordination of clients’ study participation in accordance to study timeline and protocol.
Steven J. Shoptaw, PhD
Dr. Shoptaw is a licensed psychologist and Professor in both the Department of Family Medicine and the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA. Over the past 15 years, Dr. Shoptaw has conducted a series of clinical studies in community clinic settings, primarily on topics that involve developing medical and behavioral interventions to treat substance abusers. He is the Director of a NIDA-funded Center of Excellence (P50 DA018185) on medication development for methamphetamine abuse. Over the past 13 years, Dr. Shoptaw has engaged 22 trials as principal or co-principal investigator on medication treatments: cocaine abuse (10 trials), for methamphetamine abuse (7 trials), for alcohol abuse (2 trials) and for nicotine dependence (3 trials). He is also the Director of the Intervention Core of the UCLA Center for HIV Identification, Prevention, and Treatment Services (CHIPTS).
Razzaq Siddiq
As a Programmer Analyst, Mr. Siddiq works on various IT projects, which involves installing, configuring, maintaining, and troubleshooting Microsoft Windows servers. He also provides hardware and software support on Intel-based servers, desktops (2000 and XP) and Macintosh (OS 9 and 10) computers. He also provides assistance with configuring and troubleshooting TCP/IP on multiple subnets, including support of 802.11a/b/g/n wireless networking onsite as well as offsite facilities. He also programs and design websites using SQL, HTML, Javascript and ASP.
Aimee Noelle Swanson, PhD
Dr. Swanson is a Project Director who oversees Phase II clinical work under the leadership of Drs. Shoptaw and Heinzerling. This work includes clinical trials as part of the NIDA-funded P50 Center For Excellence Phase II clinical trials determining the efficacy of medications for the treatment of methamphetamine dependence, a clinical trial to determine the effectiveness of nicotine replacement therapy for adolescents, and a pharmacogenomic study of bupropion for methamphetamine users.
Rosemary C. Veniegas, PhD
Dr. Veniegas is an Assistant Research Psychologist. Her research focuses on the dissemination and implementation of evidence-based interventions in real world settings. She is also the Associate Director for the Intervention Core of the Center for HIV Identification, Prevention and Treatment Services, which is an NIMH funded prevention research center that provides technical and capacity building assistance to scientists and diverse stakeholders.
Gregory Victorianne
Mr. Victorianne is the Research / Administrative Coordinator for the group. He is also the Community Educator and HIV Risk Reduction Counselor for the multi-site HIV Prevention Trials Network 061 (also known as The BROTHERS Project) for Black Men who have Sex with Men.
Demetria Villanueva
Ms. Villanueva is a Staff Research Associate. Her principal duties as the Laboratory Coordinator entail overseeing the collection, processing and storage of biological samples. In addition to monitoring incoming and outgoing data, maintaining lab credentials, and consulting across projects in the development of workflow processes and protocols, she also serves as a Certified HIV Prevention Counselor and assists in administrative duties at the Vine St. Clinic as needed.