Context
This pre-engineering research internship is part of the first semester of my final year (ING-5) at ENSPY, supervised by Pr Tsopze Norbert (University of Yaoundé I), in collaboration with Pr Bernard Fongang (University of Texas, USA).
Subject
Building leakage-resistant models for predicting the risk of conversion from Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) to dementia, over a 2 to 5 year horizon, across three reference cohorts in neuroscience research:
- NACC (National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center)
- ADNI (Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative)
- Framingham (Framingham Heart Study)
The data combines clinical information, imaging, and biomarkers.
Approach
The work focuses on three areas:
- External validation: assessing how well models generalize across cohorts
- Calibration: ensuring predicted risk scores reflect real-world probabilities
- Interpretable baselines: reference models (Cox regression, XGBoost) analyzed with SHAP to understand the identified risk factors
Status
This project is ongoing. Results and a more detailed methodology description will be added as the internship progresses.