DuBois Bowman

My commitment: Understanding and preventing the onset and progression of Parkinson’s disease

As a biostatistician, my work focuses on Parkinson’s disease.

There is a long period of neurodegeneration that occurs prior to the onset of symptoms, and those symptoms aren't necessarily unique to Parkinson’s disease, so there's an even further lag after the manifestation of the symptoms before diagnosis.

Using biostatistical methods for brain imaging data, we can track a million data points reflecting an individual’s brain function and use it as a source to attack the problem.

I am looking at how we can extract information that's clinically actionable. This effort relies, specifically, on having analytic tools to be able to mine the data, to detect the proverbial needle in a haystack.

Our research hopes to shorten the path to diagnosis—to treat people before symptoms appear.

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