Cracking the Code: AI and Alzheimer’s
Chen-Nee Chuah, Ph.D. Professor Electrical & Computer Engineering UC Davis
By Sarah Colwell
For UC Noyce Initiative researchers Brittany Dugger, Ph.D. and Chen-Nee Chuah, Ph.D., their passion for Alzheimer’s research is deeply personal. In her late teens, Dugger watched as both her grandmothers— Grandma Morenski and Grandma Dugger—suffered from the devastating effects of the disease. Despite sharing the same diagnosis, their symptoms were strikingly different. That inconsistency left her with lingering questions: How could two people experience the same disease in such different ways? Finding the answer to that question has since guided her career, led her to focus on neuropathology research at UC Davis and enabled her to become the leader of the university's neuropathology core. But tackling a disease as complex as Alzheimer’s required an unconventional approach—and a powerful collaborator. Enter Chen-Nee Chuah, a professor in electrical and computer engineering at UC Davis and a leading expert in data science and artificial intelligence. Like Dugger, Chuah had a personal motivation for delving into medical research and becoming the principal investigator of this UCNI-funded project. “When I was dealing with my own health issues, I was frustrated by the gaps in applying cutting-edge computational methods to the medical domain,” she recalls. “I realized the data-driven AI techniques my team develops for networking research could potentially make a real difference in understanding complex neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s.” Chuah continued, “My mom also suffered from Alzheimer's, and did not recognize me as her daughter towards the end, while her physical health continued to decline and she passed away in 2014. So this work is personal to me as well.”
Brittany Dugger, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Pathology and Laboratory Medicine UC Davis
Peter Chang, M.D. Co- Director, Center for Artificial Intelligence in Diagnostic Medicine Associate Professor, Radiological Sciences UC Irvine
Michael Keiser, Ph.D. Associate Professor Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases UC San Francisco
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COMPUTATIONAL HEALTH
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