People

Michael Donohue, PhD

University of Southern California Alzheimer’s Therapeutic Research Institute (USC ATRI)

Dr. Donohue co-leads the Biostatistics Unit. His primary interests include modeling the long-term, multivariate evolution of Alzheimer’s Disease, and utilizing these models to inform ACTC clinical trial design. Dr. Donohue guides the unit on the use of analytic power calculations and model-based simulations to drive clinical trial design decisions regarding sample size, duration, analysis approach, and outcome measures. He helps ensure that ACTC trials are conducted with maximum statistical power and minimum participant burden. He helped develop the first Preclinical Alzheimer’s trials, and the Preclinical Alzheimer’s Cognitive Composite (PACC). Research funded by his R01 lead to a novel hierarchical Bayesian model, the Latent Time Joint Mixed-Effects Model (LTJMM). The model can simultaneously estimate long-term trajectories of several disease markers and includes a subject-specific latent time shift parameter to account for heterogeneity in disease stage.