PROJECT SUMMARY
The development of Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and AD Related Dementias (ADRD) is impacted by biological,
clinical, socio-demographic, and lifestyle factors. Therefore, training the workforce for AD/ADRD research
requires an interdisciplinary approach that is informed by community and clinical need, which is in turn critical to
rapid translation of fundamental research into practice and communities. This proposal aims at developing an
interdisciplinary training program for nurturing 9-10 predoctoral trainees annually (6 of 10 in years 1-4 and 5 of
9 in year 5 trainees will be supported by NIH, and 4 each year will be supported by Arizona State University
(ASU), who will be mentored by a team of faculty from different units/schools at ASU and clinicians/researchers
from Mayo Clinic, Banner Alzheimer Institute, Barrow Neurological Institute, and TGen, with diverse expertise
covering AD/ADRD clinical science, diagnostics and engineering, disease biology, data science, and drug
discovery/development. The training program will leverage AD/ADRD resources in Arizona and actively engage
the Arizona Alzheimer’s Consortium (AAC) and the Arizona Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (ADRC).
The program is in a unique position to partner with Mirabella, a senior living community on the ASU campus, and
Hospice of the Valley, Arizona's leading provider of end-of-life care, and other community partners to provide the
trainees with real-life experiences. The team has designed a unique program with well-rounded training
opportunities covering the following four dimensions: curriculum-based training, research training, career
development, and community-based real-world experiences. Recognizing the exponentially increasing amount
of data in all disciplines involved in AD/ADRD research and the critical and often enabling role that Artificial
Intelligence (AI) plays in data-intensive research, the proposed training program employs a data-centric
approach with AI being a bridge serving to connect all the involved disciplines through its role as a data
processing and inference engine. Accordingly, the focus of the proposed curriculum-based training and research
training is on helping the trainee to gain the fundamental knowledge and research skills in employing AI for
AD/ADRD research. The training faculty have established track records, not only for pursing AI and AD/ADRD
research, but also for doctoral student mentoring. Further, there are active collaborations among the training
faculty, which have helped to shape the design of the initial set of research projects that are ready to be deployed
for the choice of the first batch of trainees.