When Drs. Holmes and Swift were writing their grant proposal for The Diabetes Adolescent Research Project, they turned to CNDLS statistician Dr. Rusan Chen to support them in the use of statistical analysis packages and the data analysis itself. Ultimately, they received the grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to pursue a five-year longitudinal study that evaluates the role of memory and learning in diabetes self-care skills in adolescents, ages 10 to 17. CNDLS helped the faculty members analyze the data they collected between 2000 and 2005.

The statistical components in the proposal were crucial in securing funding from NIH. Dr. Chen's statistical analysis helped ensure adequate sample sizes for conducting the study. The analyses themselves also increased the chance of funding for the project, which included three study sites: Georgetown University Hospital, Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and Virginia Commonwealth University/St. Mary's Hospital in Richmond, Virginia. A total of 250 adolescents with Type I diabetes and their parents participated in the study.

During the data collection process for the Diabetes Adolescent Research Project, Dr. Chen helped the management of data entry, merge and clean-up. He also collaborated with the principal investigators and researchers to identify appropriate quantitative methods for analyzing the data for publication. Some graduate students used the project data for their dissertation topics and Dr. Chen worked with the dissertation committees to assist the PhD candidates with sound statistical methods in their dissertation research.