The National Institute on Aging has funded a new R01 (R01AG096492) to study how environmental exposures relate to Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD). Dr. Estiri is the contact principal investigator. Dr. Francesca Dominici, Professor of Biostatistics, Population, and Data Science at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, is the multiple principal investigator.

Study design: dementia phenotypes from Aim 1 feed the exposure modeling in the later aims

CLAI and the Harvard Chan team will work as one integrated group, with the analyses sequenced as the aims are written. In Aim 1, we will build dementia phenotypes from electronic health records, using large language models to label clinical notes. A knowledge graph assembled from the full-text biomedical literature and clinical ontologies will guide that labeling and will update itself as the pipeline runs. In the later aims, we will use these phenotypes to estimate how environmental exposures relate to dementia risk in large patient populations. The team held its kickoff meeting on October 8, 2026.