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4 HD Insights, Vol. 12 Copyright © Huntington Study Group 2015. All rights reserved. H D I N S I G H T S Meet the Next Generation, cont... VITAL SIGNS NAME: Jun Hua, PhD EDUCATION: BS, Electrical Engineering, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai, People's Republic of China; MS, Precision Instruments, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, People's Republic of China; MSE, Biomedical Engineering, and PhD, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD CURRENT POSITION: Assistant Professor and Research Scientist, F.M. Kirby Research Center for Functional Brain Imaging, Kennedy Krieger Institute, Baltimore, MD; Assistant Professor, Russell H. Morgan Department of Radiology, Johns Hopkins University HOBBIES: Spending time with his two young children, skiing and snowboarding, playing various sports and traveling with family RESEARCH INTERESTS: Dr. Hua specializes in the development and application of advanced MRI technologies to the study of human neurological diseases. Dr. Hua's research collaboration with Dr. Christopher Ross has revealed increased blood volume in small arteries and arterioles in the brains of prodromal HD patients, before brain atrophy can be observed. His current research is focused on the use of novel functional and physiological MRI techniques to develop early functional biomarkers of HD progression based on neurovascular and metabolic changes in the brain. He emphasizes the importance of HD as a model disease that can shed light on the mechanisms of other neurodegenerative diseases. HOPES FOR THE FUTURE: Dr. Hua hopes to see improvements in functional biomarkers, which have historically been difficult to develop due to the small effect sizes and difficulty in detecting these biomarkers with current methods. He is particularly interested in new technological developments that will enable more accurate and specific biomarker detection. PUBLICATION HIGHLIGHT: Hua J, Unschuld PG, Margolis RL, et al. Elevated arteriolar cerebral blood volume in prodromal Huntington's disease patients. Mov Disord. 2014 Mar;29(3):396-401. doi: 10.1002/mds.25591. Epub 2013 Jul 11. Dr. Jun Hua HD Human Biology Project Fellow VITAL SIGNS NAME: Tanya Garcia, PhD EDUCATION: BS, Mathematics, University of California, Irvine, CA; MS, Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, University of California, Berkeley, CA; MSc, Statistics, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada; PhD, Statistics, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX CURRENT POSITION: Assistant Professor of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Texas A&M University HOBBIES: Traveling, hiking, and exploring the outdoors with her husband and two rescued dogs RESEARCH INTERESTS: Dr. Garcia's work focuses on the development of statistical models to predict HD progression. Using data from previous observational studies such as PREDICT and COHORT, she and her colleagues are developing an advanced statistical model of patient-specific features of HD progression. The model aims to be able to predict not only when events occur in the progression of the disease, but also how long it takes those events to occur in time. The applications of the model could be far-reaching. In particular, Dr. Garcia and colleagues hope to be able to better predict and design clinical trials by using the model to inform power calculations and effect sizes needed in trial design of the trials. HOPES FOR THE FUTURE: "We are close to finding out which different biomarkers are really associated with disease onset," Dr. Garcia told HD Insights. "We hope we will have very reliable, targetable biomarkers in 10 years, and that our developing statistical methods will help with this process." PUBLICATION HIGHLIGHT: Wang Y, Garcia TP, Ma Y. Nonparametric estimation for censored mixture data with application to the cooperative Huntington's observational research trial. J Am Stat Assoc. 2012;107(500):1324-1338. Dr. Tanya Garcia HD Human Biology Project Fellow