August 10 – August 15, 2025
Integrating findings from multiple data sources is essential for advancing research on cognitive aging and dementia. However, inconsistencies in measurement across studies and restrictions on data access often create major barriers to evidence synthesis. This workshop will explore innovative strategies to overcome these challenges, focusing on two key approaches: data harmonization and synthetic data generation. This workshop will introduce practical tools for combining data from different studies, even when the measurements are not identical. We will cover techniques to make data from different sources more comparable (harmonization) and ways to generate realistic but artificial datasets (synthetic data) to help researchers overcome barriers related to privacy, missing measures, and statistical power. These approaches can improve data sharing and support stronger, more inclusive research on cognitive aging. With increasing computational power, the ability to simulate, synthesize, and harmonize data has become an essential skill for dementia research. This workshop will provide hands-on training in these techniques, using real-world datasets.