The Cleveland Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (CADRC) has long been committed to advancing Alzheimer's research through rigorous science and the mentorship of emerging talent. That commitment was on full display this spring — first when CADRC Data Management and Statistics Core Investigator Dr. Dana Crawford's student, Carly M. Rose, presented her Alzheimer's disease research at the Keystone Symposia in Hannover, Germany, and now, just weeks later, with even more to celebrate.

Two Biomedical & Health Informatics PhD students from Case Western Reserve University's Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences were selected to present their Alzheimer’s Disease research at the 2026 AMIA Amplify Informatics conference, held May 18–21 in Denver, Colorado. Their work — one rooted in the CADRC's data-driven approach to Alzheimer's research, the other exploring the genetics of cognitive decline — reflects the breadth and depth of Alzheimer's-focused inquiry happening at CWRU.

Carly Rose, PhD — Oral Presentation
Carly Rose, who completed her PhD in 2026 under the mentorship of Dr. Dana Crawford, CADRC Data Management and Statistics Core Investigator and Professor of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences at CWRU School of Medicine, was selected for an oral presentation — a competitive honor at AMIA. Her talk focused on a question that emerged from her dissertation research: why do some institutions share their clinical data for research while others don't?

Her dissertation work centered on the National Clinical Cohort Collaborative (N3C), a large-scale data enclave originally developed during the COVID-19 pandemic to enable rapid, nationwide research. Using N3C, Carly investigated how COVID-19 infection — alone and in combination with the shingles vaccine — affected the risk of late-onset Alzheimer disease over a five-year period. (If you missed those findings, you can read about them in our previous post.)

During that research, Carly noticed something worth investigating on its own: while many U.S. institutions with electronic health records contributed their clinical data to N3C, several large institutions did not. Her AMIA presentation explored what distinguishes data-sharing institutions from those that opt out. She found that institutions with access to specific resources — including relevant expertise and certain government grants — were more likely to share data, though these factors didn't fully explain the behavior. Understanding what drives or limits data sharing has real implications for the future of large-scale health research.

Carly's Alzheimer's risk findings are currently under peer review, but a preprint is available at medrxiv.org. Her data-sharing research is being published in the AMIA conference proceedings and can also be found at medrxiv.org.

Shraddha Dumawat — Poster Presentation
Also representing CWRU at AMIA was Shraddha Dumawat, a current PhD student in the same Biomedical & Health Informatics program, mentored by Dr. William Bush, Professor of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences. Shraddha was selected for a poster presentation on her research into the genetics of late-onset Alzheimer disease.

Shraddha's work focuses on genetic variants already known to be associated with Alzheimer's risk in people of European descent. She investigated whether these same variants are linked not just to whether someone develops cognitive decline but are also associated with the speed of cognitive decline — using data from the Alzheimer Disease Sequencing Project. Her findings suggest that some genetic changes are associated with earlier onset of decline, while others appear to offer a protective delay.

Shraddha plans to expand the study beyond the 62 genetic variants currently examined and to include more diverse population groups. She and Dr. Bush anticipate that the final results will help explain why two patients with similar clinical profiles can have very different experiences of cognitive decline — a question with profound implications for personalized care and treatment planning.

A Growing Legacy of Informatics Research
These presentations reflect the strength of CWRU's Biomedical & Health Informatics program and its commitment to research that bridges data science and real-world health outcomes. For the CADRC, Carly's work is a direct embodiment of its mission — using large-scale data to uncover modifiable risk factors for Alzheimer's disease and to understand the infrastructure that makes such research possible. Shraddha's complementary work on the genetics of cognitive decline adds another dimension to that picture. Together, they represent the next generation of researchers asking the hard questions that will shape the future of Alzheimer's care — one dataset, one question, one presentation at a time.