Home Department: Undeclared
Mentor: Marius Wernig (Pathology)

"Developing a Machine Learning Tool to Evaluate In Vitro Microglial Health in Huntington’s Disease"

Joseph’s project involves developing a quantitative understanding of how microglia interact with plaque aggregate linked to Huntington’s. By developing this ML model to perform image analyses on videos taken of these interactions, Joseph will create a new quantitative dataset for evaluating microglial health (using motility, ramified process length, consumption rate, and other parameters). Traditional methods of this analysis tend to be labor-intensive and only feasible on a small scale, whereas this tool would allow for a more effective evaluation. As for future impact, this tool could accelerate pharmaceutical development by allowing researchers to quickly test the effects of new treatments.