Chineze Egbunike

Chineze Egbunike

Chineze Egbunike, is a sophomore at Columbia University studying Operations Research on the Analytics track. She grew up 20 minutes from Boston and enjoys singing in her free time

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a muscle- weakening disease affecting people in the US and people worldwide. In the US, over 7000 people die from ALS every year, based on a 2010-2020 average. The best part about working for the Broad for the second time was realizing that the things I loved most about my first experience hadn’t changed: I learned on challenging and exciting science, there was still such a great emphasis on improving diversity and inclusion in STEM, and I was surrounded by a very supportive community of people.However, the causes of and contributors to this disease are unknown. While men tend to be more susceptible to developing ALS than women, with an age-adjusted ALS death rate of 2.25% compared to 1.54%, respectively, the extent to which gender, race, ethnicity, and geography contribute to the development and progression of ALS remains to be determined. In this project, I created graphs to visualize the impact of different factors including gender, race, ethnicity, and geographical region on ALS death rates and place of death over time in the U.S. I used these visual models to predict which factors are correlated with the development of ALS. Then, I will mathematically analyze how these factors influence the likelihood of developing ALS through geospatial analysis using R. My initial hypothesis is that ALS will be more prevalent in certain regions in the country, in addition to being more prevalent in men. This information can be used to influence treatment and prioritize more vulnerable individuals when providing care for people with ALS.

 

Project: Investigating Contributing Factors to Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosi

Mentors: Marie-Laure Charpignon, Schmidt Center