Hira A. Awan is a PhD student in the Roy J. Carver Department of Biomedical Engineering and a graduate research assistant in the Reinhardt Biomedical Imaging Lab. She has a master's degree in Biostatistics from Duke University. Her research interest is to study the associations between quantitative computed tomography (QCT) derived textures and all-cause mortality. In addition to this, she is also trying to investigate the role of these QCT textures towards understanding the inflammatory mechanisms of COPD.