Professor Fan has received a new National Institutes of Health grant to develop and use statistics and machine learning techniques, to discover the potential genes and biomarkers related to the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). The scientific goal is to develop and apply statistical machine learning methods mainly to the study of AD, a chronic neurodegenerative disease.

As a critical issue that plagues our population today, AD demands immediate attention from health and scientific researchers. Big Data transcends the mathematical field and has valuable applications in the medical and sociological dimensions. This project can unite basic research with cutting-edge statistical tools to educate future students and researchers on how to effectively analyze large amounts of data that pose various statistical obstacles.