Shieva Davarian

Before coming to USC, Shieva Davarian earned a BA in Psychology and an MS in Biology.  She has had three years of experience working in a behavioral neuroscience lab and one year of experience working in cognitive neuroscience and cognitive science labs as an undergraduate and post-graduate.  During that time, Shieva conducted research on the pharmacology of various neurological and psychological disorders.  During her masters program, Shieva worked in an immunology lab conducting research on cytokine expression levels in diabetic brain tissue.

At USC, Shieva works in the biodemography lab of Dr. Eileen Crimmins where she performs cross-national research on health trends.  Shieva is particularly interested in studying health differences between Japan and the United States, two economically similar but demographically different countries.  Currently, Shieva is conducting research on hypertension and cognitive decline in Japan and the US as well as on the association of oral health and mortality in the US.  For her research, Shieva has used various datasets, the ones she has used most are the Health and Retirement Study for the US and the Nihon University Japanese Longitudinal Study of Aging.  While a student at USC, Shieva had the opportunity to go to Japan for an internship at Nihon University in Tokyo.  In addition to the work she has been doing with Dr. Crimmins, Shieva has written a chapter on financing long-term care in Japan as part of a larger publication on financing long-term care in the Pacific Rim.  Shieva has also had the opportunity to give a guest lecture on diabetes and hypertension for Yamano College as part of the series of courses on aging that the Davis school is preparing for Yamano College in Japan.

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