Our Team

Leadership:

Rhoda Au (PhD, MBA)

Director, Primary Investigator

Rhoda Au is a Professor of Anatomy & Neurobiology, Neurology, Medicine and Epidemiology at Boston University. She also serves as one of the principal investigators of the Framingham Heart Study Brain Aging Program (FHS-BAP) and is currently the Director of Neuropsychology. Her work includes using technologies to promote equal opportunity science and to develop and validate multi-sensor digital biomarkers. Her long-term research objective is to enable global solutions that move the primary focus of health technologies from precision medicine to a broader emphasis on precision brain health.

See full profile on BU School of Medicine website

Vijaya Kolachalama (PhD)

Primary Investigator

Vijaya Kolachalama is an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine and the Department of Computer Science at Boston University. He is also a founding member of the Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences at BU. Dr. Kolachalama’s research group is primarily focused on developing advanced machine learning algorithms that have diagnostic relevance. His laboratory is funded by multiple awards from the National Institutes of Health, the American Heart Association, private foundations, and the pharmaceutical industry.

See full profile on BU School of Medicine website

Katherine A. Gifford (PsyD)

Primary Investigator

Katherine Gifford is an Associate Professor of Anatomy & Neurobiology at Boston University. She is a licensed clinical neuropsychologist with a research focus on the early detection of unhealthy brain aging, such as Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. Work from her team has included the creation of a new tool to assess subjective cognitive decline that has been validated against multi-modal markers of Alzheimer’s disease. Currently, she is focused on expanding early detection efforts through scalable and digital modalities and collaborates with other teams on clinical assessment and diagnosis of dementia.

Philip Hwang (PhD, MPH)

Investigator

Phillip Hwang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Boston University School of Public Health and the Department of Anatomy & Neurobiology at Boston University School of Medicine. His work is focused on the prevention of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD) through early detection and identification of risk and protective factors. Current research centers on modifiable lifestyle factors such as diet, exercise, and social connectedness, in relation to resilience and risk of ADRD across the life course, as well as projects on the use of digital measures of cognition and behavior in older adults.

See full profile on BU School of Public Health website

Huitong Ding (PhD)

Research Assistant Professor

Dr. Ding is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Anatomy & Neurobiology. He was previously a postdoctoral associate at the PBHI lab where he received training in brain aging research and explored the application of advanced analytical approaches to conduct interdisciplinary research in cognitive science. His current research explores cognitive heterogeneity, sex differences, early detection, digital phenotyping of cognitive impairment, and heart-brain connection using inclusive approaches.

Non-BU Affiliates:

Honghuang Lin (PhD)

Professor of Medicine, Primary Investigator

Dr. Lin is a Professor of Medicine and Co-director of the Program in Digital Medicine at UMass Chan Medical School. His research is focused on the bioinformatics and statistical analysis of genetics and multi-omics data for cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer’s disease. He is also developing machine learning models for the early diagnosis of diseases using a large collection of blood biomarkers, images, digital data and electronic health records. Dr. Lin was previously an Associate Professor of Medicine at Boston University and still serves as the principal investigator of the Futurizing Brain Health project.

See full profile on UMass Chan Medical School website

Ileana De Anda-Duran (MD, MPH)

Research Assistant Professor

Dr. De Anda-Duran is a Research Assistant Professor at the Epidemiology Department at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. Her research centers on identifying interventions that can impact brain health at the population level and reduce the disproportionate burden of dementia in racial and ethnic minorities. By investigating cardiovascular pathways to healthy cognitive aging and using decentralized technology-based approaches to overcome research barriers, she aims to discover digital measures that may be more sensitive than traditional metrics at identifying individuals who would benefit from CV risk control.

Postdoctorals:

Meysam Ahangaran (PhD)

Postdoctoral Research Associate

Dr. Ahangaran is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Boston University School of Medicine in the Computational Biomedicine research group. He received a Ph.D. in computer engineering and artificial intelligence. His research mainly focuses on machine learning methods in Alzheimer’s disease using different data modalities such as MRI, cognitive, clinical and neuropsychological data. He works under the supervision of Dr. Vijaya Kolachalama.

Matteo Bellitti (PhD)

Postdoctoral Research Associate

Dr. Bellitti is a Postdoctoral Researcher Associate in the Department of Computational Biomedicine at Boston University School of Medicine. His research focuses on bringing machine learning and advanced mathematical techniques to Alzheimer’s disease research. He received a PhD in physics.

Francesca Marino (PhD)

Postdoctoral Research Associate

Dr. Marino is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Anatomy & Neurobiology and received a Ph.D. in epidemiology. Her research focuses on using sensors and wearable devices to identify digital markers of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD). In particular, her work centers on understanding associations between physical activity and other modifiable risk factors with cognitive function among older adults, as well as identifying objectively measured patterns of daily physical activity that are most strongly related to ADRD.

Maciej Kos

Postdoctoral Research Associate

Dr. Kos is a postdoctoral fellow at Northeastern University’s Center for Cognitive and Brain Health and BU’s PBHI. He specializes in mHealth, sensing, and behavioral modeling. With a background in computer and behavioral sciences, he combines data-driven and statistical approaches with computational mechanistic modeling and decision-making frameworks to address challenges in health monitoring and cognitive aging. Dr. Kos enjoys collaborations on meaningful projects and mentoring students.
His work is funded by the NIA K00 Career Award, with previous funding from ACM, Intel, and Google. He holds a Health Informatics Ph.D. from Northeastern.

Data Team:

Zexu Li (M.S.)

Research Data Analyst

Zexu mainly works on data management and data analysis at the PBHI lab. He received an MS in Data Analytics from Boston University in 2023 and is currently pursuing a PhD in biostatistics. His research is primarily interested in the overlap between genetics and machine learning.

Edward Searls (B.A.)

Research Applications Developer

Edward is responsible for building data infrastructure to support research and promote data accessibility. He graduated in 2021 from Amherst College. He is currently pursuing a Masters in Electrical and Computer Engineering from BU. Edward is interested in all manner of technology and software systems.

Study Staff:

Kristi Ho (B.A.)

Project Manager

Kristi helps manage and implement new projects related to digital technologies. She is pursuing an MPH in Biostatistics and Epidemiology and is interested in working with data to promote health equity related to chronic diseases among marginalized groups.