Xavier E. Cagigas, PhD, is a clinical and research psychologist with specialized training in neuropsychology, and as a bilingual and bicultural clinician and educator, has been providing clinical assessment services to the Latina/o community of Los Angeles for several years. Dr. Cagigas was born and raised in “ambos Nogales,” a small border town straddling Arizona and Sonora, Mexico. He graduated from Salpointe Catholic College Preparatory School at the top of his class, and completed his undergraduate education at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., where he was first named a Minority Undergraduate Student of Excellence by the American Psychological Association. He then went on to complete doctoral studies within the nationally acclaimed Neuropsychology Track of the San Diego State University / University of California, San Diego Joint Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology where he also completed further specialized coursework in cultural cognition within the UCSD Department of Cognitive Science. During his graduate years, Dr. Cagigas was awarded the UCSD Eugene Cota-Robles Fellowship, the Dorathe L. Frick Memorial Award for Outstanding Contribution by a Doctoral Student, was inducted a member of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate, and was awarded an NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award by the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke (NINDS). Dr. Cagigas subsequently completed a clinical psychology internship within the Neuropsychology and Exceptional Abilities Track at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience & Human Behavior, followed by an NIMH sponsored T32 postdoctoral fellowship in Neurobehavioral Genetics and Neuropsychology within the Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences where he was featured as an example of interdisciplinary training by the NIH Office of Strategic Coordination. He eventually accepted a faculty position to serve as the founding director of the UCLA Cultural Neuropsychology Initiative (later the Cultural Neuropsychology program), and eventually served as the Director of Clinical Services and Training for the broader program of the UCLA Medical Psychology Assessment Center. He currently serves as Interim Director of the UCLA Hispanic Neuropsychiatric Center of Excellence, PI for the LACDMH-UCLA Public Partnership for Wellbeing’s Bilingual and Spanish Interdisciplinary Clinical Training Program (BASIC-T), Chair of the UCLA Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital’s Ethics Committee, and Health Sciences Associate Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences within the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

Dr. Cagigas’ scholarly interests focus on examining the interface of cultural practices, bilingualism, and neurocognition, and he serves as a consulting editor for a number of research journals on issues of diversity and cultural cognition. Over the years, Dr. Cagigas has been an invited speaker both nationally and internationally on the emerging disciplines of cultural neuropsychology and cultural neuroscience, including the First Ibero-American Congress of Neuropsychology in Bilbao, Spain, and as the recipient of the prestigious Annual Frances J. Bonner Diversity Award from the MGH/Harvard Department of Psychiatry & Center for Diversity. As such, Dr. Cagigas has emerged as a champion for diversity both within UCLA and across academic circles both nationally and internationally. He sits on the UCLA School of Medicine’s Diversity Oversight Committee, is a founding member of his own department’s diversity group, and is a Past President of the Hispanic Neuropsychological Society. Dr. Cagigas has dedicated his career to supporting new assessment methods, training models, mid-career supervision models, and clinical strategies that begin to substantially increase the percentage of diverse patients that neuropsychologists are able to competently serve with particular emphasis in the Latina/x community.