OSWEGO, N.Y. — Dr. Sungeun Kim, a faculty member of SUNY Oswego’s electrical and computer engineering department, recently received a grant award of almost $119,000 to use big-data techniques to support “earlier and more accurate diagnosis” of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s. The grant, from the National Library of Medicine of the National Institutes of […]
OSWEGO, N.Y. — Dr. Sungeun Kim, a faculty member of SUNY Oswego’s electrical and computer engineering department, recently received a grant award of almost $119,000 to use big-data techniques to support “earlier and more accurate diagnosis” of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.
The grant, from the National Library of Medicine of the National Institutes of Health, will assist a project — entitled “Integrating Neuroimaging, Multi-omics, and Clinical Data in Complex Disease” — that Kim is working on with two other researchers, according to a SUNY Oswego news release.
An assistant professor at SUNY Oswego since 2016, Kim also is an adjunct assistant research professor at the Indiana University School of Medicine, where he has worked for years on projects related to Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other diseases exhibiting progressive dementia.
Kim, whose research interests include such disciplines as bioinformatics, bioinstrumentation, neuroscience, and genetics, joins Indiana University colleague Kwangsik Nho and Geisinger Health System faculty member Dokyoon Kim as principal investigators on the project.
Kim said the importance of his work is in “combining layers of massive datasets from disparate sources, then testing and validating it, to analyze genes, biomarkers, and patient data for better predicting the onset of such neurodegenerative diseases as Alzheimer’s and paving the way for earlier treatment and the development of more effective drugs.” The results would then contribute to software to be made available to other researchers in the field, per the release.
“If we can develop a toolkit to more accurately identify people at risk years earlier, we have more chance to intervene in the progression of the disease,” Kim said.
Kim currently has two other grant projects underway, both involving colleagues from Indiana University School of Medicine and its Indiana Alzheimer’s Disease Center. Indiana University also is home to the “Big Red II” supercomputer and advanced storage devices, to which Kim has access, if needed, in his research. He also plans to hire one or more SUNY Oswego students to help out on the project.
In addition to his research, Kim teaches electromagnetics and a seminar in electrical and computer engineering this fall at SUNY Oswego, and he is developing a bioinstrumentation course.
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