Research output per year
Research output per year
Spencer T. Olin Professor in Arts & Sciences, Professor of Mathematics
Willing to Mentor
Available to Mentor:
PhD/MSTP Students
Research activity per year
I am interested in using mathematics to help understand biology. This requires patient collaborators: they must be willing to explain the problem to me in terms that I can understand. In return, I am happy to discuss how mathematics can be used to provide insight into the phenomena.
At the moment, our research focuses on two specific goals using the data from the DIAN (Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer`s Network) project, which has already been collected, and is a well-characterized cohort. The age of onset of AD in this cohort is very close to that of their relatives (within a couple of years). Among the imaging markers that have been measured are the amount and distribution of Amyloid in the brain (amyloid plaques are a signature of AD); the distribution of glucose metabolism (measured using FDG (uorodeoxyglucose) as an imaging ligand), which shows how active different areas of the brain are; the volume of different brain regions (some shrink as the brain atrophies with AD); and the interconnectivity of the resting state (in a healthy brain, different regions` neural activity are correlated; as AD develops, this correlation breaks down).
Goal 1: How are these 4 imaging markers (Amyloid, glucose metabolism, volume, and resting state) related? What is the relationship between their topographies?
Goal 2: Using multivariate measurements, can we improve the prediction of time to onset? Is one set of measurements sufficient, or does longitudinal data improve the prediction?
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review