06/12/2026
Community Friends of Santa Barbara Serves all residents of Santa Barbara County. One of our philanthropic efforts is a program of scholarships our donations to our partner the Scholarship Foundation of Santa Barbara supports students from all over the county. Community Friends of Santa Barbara recently hosted guest speaker Erica Rivera. Ms. Rivera received support from the Scholarship Foundation of Santa Barbara during her undergraduate studies in Bioengineering at UC Berkeley and continues to be supported as a Ph.D. student at UCSB, where she researches Alzheimer’s disease. She hopes her work will contribute to the development of treatments for Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases, improving the lives of patients and families affected by these devastating conditions. Ms. Rivera is the co-founder of ProFoldBio (https://www.profoldbio.com/) a local startup aimed at enabling the development of therapeutics for amyloid disease. Community Friends of Santa Barbara is proud to be one of her financial supporters! We congratulate her on her success and wish her the best with her start up.