Co-Directors
Kenneth Land
Research Professor
I received my Ph.D. in sociology and mathematics from the University of Texas at Austin in 1969. After a year of postdoctoral study in mathematical statistics at Columbia University in New York City, I taught there and was a member of the staff of the Russell Sage Foundation for three years. I then was successively a member of the faculties of the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and the University of Texas at Austin before joining the Duke Sociology Department as Chairman in 1986. I served as Chair of Sociology from January 1986 to August 1997. My main research interests are contemporary social trends and quality-of-life measurement, social problems, demography, criminology, organizations, and mathematical and statistical models and methods for the study of social and demographic processes. I have done extensive research in each of these areas and have been elected a Fellow of the American Statistical Association (1978), the Sociological Research Association (1981), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1992), the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies (1997), and the American Society of Criminology (2004). I currently am the John Franklin Crowell Professor of Sociology Emeritus and no longer teach academic classes. I also am a Research Professor at Duke University Social Science Research Institute (SSRI) and Co-Director of the Biodemography of Aging Research Unit (BARU), part of the SSRI. As part of the BARU research team, I work on the biology and demography of aging and healthy aging research, including the health impacts of diseases such as Alzheimer’s. My other interests include pickleball, cycling, and music.
Eric Stallard
Research Professor
I am a Research Professor in the Social Science Research Institute and Co-Director of the Biodemography of Aging Research Unit at Duke University. I am a Member of the American Academy of Actuaries, a Fellow of the Conference of Consulting Actuaries, and an Associate of the Society of Actuaries. My research expertise includes modeling and forecasting for biomedical demography and health/LTC actuarial practice. My expertise in these areas is evidenced by my five books, five monographs, 151 scientific articles, 84 actuarial publications, and my service on the 2007 Technical Panel on Assumptions and Methods of the Social Security Advisory Board, my 2007–2010 position as Deputy Editor of the scientific journal Demography, my winning of the Society of Actuaries’ Edward A. Lew Award in 2008 for the best paper in actuarial modeling (in the LTC area), and my 2011–2012 position as a Member of the NAS/IOM Panel on Measuring Medical Care Risk. My expertise in these areas is further evidenced by my scientific contributions in the areas of mortality, morbidity/disability, Alzheimer’s disease, biodemography of aging, and epidemiology and modeling. I was responsible for developing new algorithms for imputing missing assessments of cognitive impairments (CI) among institutionalized participants in the 1984 NLTCS—a critical step in the discovery of unexpectedly large declines in CI prevalence (compared to ADL declines) during 1984–2004. I was also responsible for the development of the longitudinal Grade of Membership model now being used for Alzheimer’s disease progression in collaboration with Yaakov Stern at Columbia University.
Anatoliy I. Yashin
Research Professor
I am a Research Professor and the co-Director of the Biodemography of Aging Research Unit at the Social Science Research Institute, Duke University. I research aging, with expertise in developing mathematical and statistical methods of analysis of genetic and non-genetic data on aging, health, and survival using data collected in various longitudinal human studies. My major research interest is in understanding mechanisms regulating rates of physiological aging changes, age-associated health decline, and longevity, with emphases on complex connections between these traits, on interacting genetic and non-genetic factors in longevity and age-associated diseases, and on polygenic effects on health and survival.
Faculty
Igor Akushevich
Research Professor
I am an Associate Professor at the Biodemography Research Unit of the Social Science Research Institute. His expertise includes a biodemography, epidemiology, causal methods, and advanced statistical modeling of health effects with specific focus on health disparities, cognitive disorders, and multimorbidity in older US adults. My current research is focused on quantitative evaluation of the mechanisms underlying disease-specific time trends and racial and geographic disparities in Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia, impacts of clinic-related factors and social determinants to these trends, as well as on leveraging existing and developing new approaches to large population-based data analysis.
Konstantin Arbeev
Associate Research Professor
I received an M.S. degree in Applied Mathematics from Moscow State University (branch in Ulyanovsk, Russia) in 1995 and a Ph.D. degree in Mathematics and Physics (specialization in Theoretical Foundations of Mathematical Modeling, Numerical Methods and Programming) from Ulyanovsk State University (Russia) in 1999. I was a post-doctoral fellow at Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock (Germany) before moving to Duke University in 2004 to work as a Research Scientist and a Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Sociology and the Social Science Research Institute (SSRI). I am currently an Associate Research Professor in SSRI. My major research interests are related to three interconnected fields of biodemography, biostatistics and genetic epidemiology as pertains to research on aging. The focus of my research is on discovering genetic and non-genetic factors that can affect the process of aging and determine longevity and a healthy lifespan. I am interested in both methodological advances in this research area as well as their practical applications to analyses of large-scale longitudinal studies with phenotypic, genetic, and, recently, genomic information. I have authored and co-authored more than 150 peer-reviewed publications in these areas.
Alexander Kulminski
Research Professor
My major research interests stem from my desire to understand determinants of long and healthy life. My current research focuses on genetic and non-genetic factors influencing health, aging, and life span emphasizing the life course approach and specific properties of phenotypes that make our bodies vulnerable to diseases in late, i.e., post-reproductive, life. The original training and fifteen-year experience in the fields of physics and mathematics and fifteen-year experience in aging, health, and longevity research prepared me as multi- and interdisciplinary researcher.
I used this expertise to examine the role of systemic processes in an aging organism characterized by a composite measure, called an index of cumulative deficits or deficit index, in health, well-being and survival. These studies showed that the deficit index is a robust marker of human health, biological age, and survival chances. Most recently, I was engaged in the development and implementation of an innovative concept of the life course genetics in association studies. This concept is motivated by experimental evidences from genetics, gerontology, demography, and epidemiology, among the other disciplines, and by evolutionary theory. The results of my research show that the life-course approach in genetics of age-related traits is critical for our understanding of genetic origin of health span and life span, and for translation of genetic discoveries to health care.
Svetlana Oukraintseva
Research Professor
I study causes of human aging and related decline in resilience, to identify genetic and other factors responsible for the increase in mortality risk with age eventually limiting longevity. I explores complex relationships, including trade-offs, between physiological aging-changes and risks of major diseases (with emphasis on Alzheimer’s and cancer), as well as survival, to find new genetic and other targets for anti-aging interventions and disease prevention. I also investigate possibilities of repurposing of existing vaccines and treatments for AD prevention and interventions into the aging. For this, my team and I use data from several large human studies containing rich genetic and phenotypic information (including longitudinal measurements) on thousands of individuals. I am a PI and Key Investigator on several NIH funded grants, and has more than 130 peer-reviewed publications, including in major journals such as Nature Reviews, Stroke, European Journal of Human Genetics, and some other.
Arseniy Yashkin
Associate Research Professor
I have a rich background in the fields of public health, health economics, and health services research, with over 10 years of experience of working with survey and administrative data including Medicare 5% claims, Medicare 5% Part D, the National Long Term Care Survey (NLTCS), the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS), The Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results Medicare-linked data (SEER-M), the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS), and a self-compiled database based on information drawn from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS).
Researchers
Vito Di Bona
Statistician II
I am a Statistician II and am responsible for providing data management and analysis to support BARU’s grant initiatives. Before joining BARU, I worked at the State Center for Health Statistics as a health services analyst and survey statistician. I graduated from Warren Wilson College with a BA in mathematics and earned an MS in Experimental Statistics from New Mexico State University. I have a passion for environmental justice and health equity.
Matt Duan
Statistician III
I started my journey as a clinical surgeon after graduating from Dalian Medical University, China, and practiced at Liaoning Provincial Hospital for seven years. After that, I moved to the United States to explore my interest in biomedical research in the area of data analysis, gene therapy, and molecular biology at the University of North Carolina and Duke University. In 2013, I decided to focus my research interest on the field of data science. I was admitted into the Statistics graduate program at UNC and earned my Master’s degree in Statistics and Operations Research. I had the opportunity to join the BARU team in 2015 and performed various statistical analyses using large-scale longitudinal and cross-sectional datasets with genotyping and phenotypic information.
Fan Feng
Statistician II
I joined the Biodemography of Aging Research Unit in 2018. I received a Bachelor’s degree in Statistics from Donghua University and a Master’s degree in Statistics from Wake Forest University. My role is to provide statistical and data support for human aging, age-related diseases, and life span research. My interests are statistical learning and debugging.
Diana Gerardo
Statistician II
I provide stats in a snap! In my capacity as a Statistician II, I contribute to research related to the genetic impacts on Alzheimer’s Disease. For example, I conduct pleiotropic meta-analyses that implement genome-wide association studies as an experimental design to identify associations between single nucleotide polymorphisms and Alzheimer’s disease along with other phenotypic traits. A little more on my background – I am a first-generation Latina who earned my master’s degree in Bayesian Statistics from the University of California, Santa Cruz and I strive to encourage future generations to explore opportunities in STEM fields. My technical interests are Bayesian spatial statistics and modeling, applying statistical approaches to challenges posed by modern genetic data, and exploring the links between machine learning and statistical methods.
Galina Gorbunova
Research Analyst I
I work closely with leaders in research, clinical, and public health realms to build capacity and ensure the advancement of health research. By building on my experience in business administration, I facilitate research efforts and provide guidance on research operations, including regulatory and institutional policies and processes, study documentation, contracts, and agreements. Most of my ongoing research interests center on the cost of care, social determinants of health, and disparities in health care and outcomes in diverse populations. I have co-authored articles on the cost of care and life expectancy in cancer patients, and the effect of brain injury on the risk of a diagnosis of clinical Alzheimer’s disease.
Rachel Holmes
Statistician II
My passion for mathematics started when I was young and led to my pursuit of my B.A. in Mathematics at Minot State University. I added my minor in Statistics shortly after enrolling in my first statistics course. After graduating, with a passion for both mathematics and statistics, I continued my education at Minnesota State University, Mankato, where I received my M.S. in Mathematics and Statistics. After graduating, I wasn’t sure of my career path, but I knew I wanted to help others; BARU seemed like the perfect fit. I joined the group on April 1st, 2021 (unsure whether or not it was an elaborate April Fools’ joke), working as a Statistician II. Currently, much of my work involves helping to investigate various biological pathways for Alzheimer’s and other aging-related diseases.
Masudul Hoque
Statistician II
As a Statistician for the Biodemography of Aging Research Unit, I provide statistical support in research and analysis of the Health and Retirement Study data. I graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Statistics from the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. I then completed my graduate studies in Applied Statistics at the Minnesota State University, Mankato. My thesis dissertation explored machine learning algorithms to classify and predict chess game outcomes. My research interests include machine learning, biostatistics, and epidemiology.
Ethan Jain-Washburn
Statistician III
I received my Master of Arts in Statistics from the University of Missouri. My Master's in Statistics gave me several career opportunities, one of which was working as a Risk Analyst at a bank. After being there for a couple of years I realized I wanted to make a greater impact on society's well-being. This decision ultimately led me to the Statistician II position here at Duke University. I currently work on research connecting genetics with lifespan and health. And, I hope my contributions will one day have a meaningful impact on others.
Mikhail Kovtun
Biostatistician III
I graduated from Lomonosov Moscow State University, Department of Mechanics and Mathematics, in 1975, and successfully completed coursework towards Ph.D. in the named University in 1981. I have worked in the US since 1996, and since 2002 at Duke University. At BARU I do:
* Developing novel statistical methods for the analysis of biological data.
* Applying newly developed and existing analysis methods to datasets analyzed by BARU.
* Developing software for data analysis.
* Developing data organization rules and maintaining original data on production servers.
* Configuring and installing third-party software on production servers for use by other researchers.
Irina Kulminskaya
Senior Research Scientist
I am a Senior Research Scientist in the Biodemography of Aging Research Unit (BARU) of the Social Science Research Institute (SSRI) at Duke University. I have over twenty-year experience in the fields of population genetics and cytogenetics. During the last 15 years, I have focused on research in the field of health, aging, and age-related diseases. My research interests include genetic and non-genetic underpinnings of the process of health deterioration over the life course to understand complex connections between genetic and non-genetic factors for a healthy lifespan. My current research focus is on understanding the mechanisms of Alzheimer's disease and related disorders, including genetic causes, age-related processes, family history, and environmental causes. I place a major emphasis on the analyses and interpretation of bio-molecular mechanisms involved in complex age-related traits to reveal the biological origin, discover genetic roots of diseases and related traits, and find connections between genetic and non-genetic causes of common diseases.
Yury Loika
Senior Research Scientist
I graduated from Belarusian State University in 1994 with a specialization in theoretical physics. I received my Ph.D. degree in physics and applied mathematics in Match 2003 at the Institute of Molecular and Atomic Physics (National Academy of Sciences of Belarus). I have 30 years of research experience in the field of applied mathematics, physics and statistics, and 8 years of experience in the field of population-based research, bio-demography, social science, and health/aging-related disciplines. My broad expertise in mathematical and statistical modeling of different complex systems is documented by 76 publications in peer-reviewed journals in which I provided substantial contributions as co- or leading author. For the last 8 years, I have worked in BARU (SSRI, Duke University). My current scientific interests are in the field of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of complex age-related traits. I have made a substantial contribution to support health- and aging-based research in BARU on NIH-funded projects. While at Duke, I have contributed to the development of new mathematical models and innovative statistical approaches to perform pleiotropic GWAS that allows uncovering of heterogeneous genetic effects. I have participated in the application of these approaches and models for age-related traits, with Alzheimer’s disease among the others, to analyze pleiotropic and heterogeneous genetic effects. I have developed and implemented new statistical measures that can help in evaluating the efficiency of GWAS and the heterogeneity of genetic associations in different populations. More recently, I have focused on research that helps uncover complex genetic predispositions to Alzheimer’s and other age-related diseases.
Elena Loiko
Research Associate
I started my scientific career in 1991, by joining the Biophysics Department of the Belarusian State University (Minsk, Belarus). In 1994, I graduated from the university (diploma summa cum laude). For the following 10 years, I was involved with research of platelet aggregation and disaggregation mechanisms, signal transduction pathways, platelet structure, and function under physiological and pathological conditions. I received a Ph.D. degree in Biology (Thesis title: “Mechanisms of aggregation and antiaggregation action of hydrogen peroxide on platelets”) in 2004. After this, I was involved with the management of biological research and its applications at the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. From August 2015 until May 2016, I worked as an Associate in Research at Duke University (Social Science Research Institute (SSRI)), performing research with large-scale datasets containing different phenotypic and genetic information (WHI, CARDIA, ARIC, FHS, and others). I have been performing biological analyses and complementing them with bioinformatic analyses using commercial tools such as IPA and MetaCore. By analyzing the results of statistical analyses, I examined signaling and metabolic pathways, biological functions, and potential action mechanisms of genetic markers (SNPs and genes) on investigated phenotypes (diseases and related conditions) in humans. Since November 2019, I have been working as a Research Associate in the SSRI at Duke University. I am performing research by examining connections between genetic factors and phenotypes of aging, health decline, and lifespan using longitudinal and cross-sectional data from large-scale studies.
Marissa Morado
Statistician II
I am originally from California’s Central Valley a town called Modesto. In 2019, I graduated with my degree in mathematics from California State University, Stanislaus, and later earned my master’s degree in mathematics at California State University, Fresno in 2022. I joined BARU in August under Alexander Kulminski’s group as a Statistician. I am currently working on creating statistical models to evaluate the association between Diabetes and a particular group of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) located on Chromosome 19.
Alireza Nazarian
Senior Research Scientist
I am an interdisciplinary researcher with a background in medicine, statistical genetics, genomics, and bioinformatics. My major research interest is the study of genotype-phenotype relationship in complex traits. My current research mainly entails multi-omics analysis of age-related diseases and traits (e.g., Alzheimer’s diseases and related cardiovascular risk factors) to explore their underlying genetic heterogeneity, and to optimize predictive polygenic models for them.
Stanislav Kolpakov Nikitin
Research Associate
I completed my master’s degree in Physics of Solid State from Moscow State University in 1986. In 2006, I joined Valencia University and completed my master’s degree in Advanced Photonics in 2007. In 2012, I defended my Ph.D. thesis in applied optics and quantum statistics (“summa cum laude”). After that, I was hired as a Research Fellow at Aston University from 2013 to 2018. Since 2018, I am employed as a Research Associate at BARU, SSRI, Duke University, where I perform tasks related to the investigation of racial disparity between Black and White Americans in the onset of Alzheimer’s disease under the supervision of Professor Igor Akushevich. I have 58 publications (8 with BARU) and 614 citations.
Vladimir Popov
Research Scientist
I graduated from Leningrad State University, Russia, with a master's degree in mathematics in 1979. Earned my PhD in mathematics in 1984 (Leningrad State University, Russia). In the 1980s-1990s, worked as an associate professor in the Department of Mathematics at Leningrad State Mining Institute, Russia. At the beginning of the 2000s, worked as an Information Technology consultant at the NC State Department of Public Instruction, NC State Board of Elections, Lucent Technologies, Ericson, GlaxoSmithKline, and Federal Social Security Administration. Since 2009, have been working as a research scientist for Duke University in the Department of Biology and, starting in 2020, in the Social Science Research Institute. My current research aims to investigate Alzheimer's disease and its regulatory mechanisms in the context of aging.
Tatiana Prytkova
Research Associate
The major focus of my work is the investigation of the bio-molecular mechanism and etiology of Alzheimer`s disease using genetic association studies of age-related phenotypes, and elucidation of the connections between genetic and non-genetic factors for healthy aging and longevity. My original training is in the field of physics and chemistry. I received my Ph.D. in chemistry from Duke University. I have fifteen years of experience in the fields of biomedical research, biophysics, computational biology, and computational chemistry. Before joining BARU, I worked at Chapman University and Northwestern University.
Aravind Lathika Rajendrakumar
Postdoctural Associate
I am a medical researcher and public health professional specializing in epidemiology, precision medicine, and health systems research. Currently, I work as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Duke University on aging and Alzheimer's disease. I am experienced in data analysis and I have handled big datasets involving different consortiums including Genetics of the NHS Scotland Health Research Register (GoSHARE) and RHAPSODY. I completed my Ph.D. (Medicine) from the University of Dundee, Scotland and I received my Master of Public Health from Sree Chitra Thirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology (SCTIMST), India. During my Ph.D., I used machine learning algorithms to detect biomarker associations from high-dimensional datasets and also identified inflammatory pathways and genetic markers of diabetic retinopathy. I have publications and a book chapter on different topics including diabetes, pain, tuberculosis, COVID-19, hypertension, and health workforce migration.
Alex Shemyakin
Statistician II
In my roles as a Statistician, Data Scientist, Data Analyst, and Machine Learning Developer, I have had the opportunity to contribute to projects involving both qualitative and quantitative data analysis, data processing, big data cleaning, and transformation. I am a seasoned data scientist with a strong statistical background and extensive experience in data analysis. I completed my Master’s Degree in Computer Engineering, specializing in ‘Automatic Systems of Information Processing and Data Management’ (Bauman Moscow State Technical University). I am passionate about data analysis and am inspired to apply my knowledge in research at Duke.
Xi-Liang Gu
Senior Statistician
I am a Senior Statistician/Analyst Programmer in the Biodemography of Aging Research Unit (BARU) of the Social Science Research Institute (SSRI) at Duke University. I received my MA in Physics from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1982. Currently, I am responsible for preparing the NLTCS, HRS, and NHATS data and the linkages to CMS Medicare, Medicaid, MDS, and OASIS data, for the linkages to the genetic data from the SNP array analysis; and the epigenetic data from the DNA methylation analysis, for analysis of various measures associated with aging, health, and longevity.
Administrative
