Dr. Susan Murphy is a preeminent scholar whose pioneering contributions have transformed the application of statistical methods to healthcare decision-making. She currently holds the distinguished position of Mallinckrodt Professor of Statistics and of Computer Science at Harvard University and serves as Associate Faculty at the Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence. Born on April 16, 1958 and raised in rural Louisiana, she earned her B.S. in Mathematics from Louisiana State University before completing her Ph.D. in Statistics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1989. Her academic career began at Pennsylvania State University where she served as Assistant and Associate Professor from 1989 to 1997, followed by nearly two decades as Professor of Statistics at the University of Michigan, establishing herself as a visionary in statistical methodology for longitudinal health studies before joining Harvard in 2017.
Dr. Murphy's most significant contribution is the development of Sequential Multiple Assignment Randomized Trials (SMART), an innovative experimental design framework that enables researchers to build empirically based adaptive interventions for chronic medical conditions. Her methodology addresses the critical challenge of dynamically adapting treatments based on individual patient responses over time, fundamentally moving beyond traditional single-intervention clinical trials to create personalized treatment pathways for conditions including ADHD, substance abuse, depression, HIV/AIDS, and cardiovascular disease. The widespread adoption of SMART methodology across medical research has revolutionized how clinical trials are designed for chronic and relapsing disorders, with her subsequent work on Just-in-Time Adaptive Interventions (JITAIs) extending these principles to mobile health applications that deliver precisely timed behavioral interventions based on real-time user data. Her research has been cited over 30,000 times, demonstrating its profound influence across statistics, computer science, and clinical medicine, with tangible impacts on treatment protocols for millions of patients worldwide.
Beyond her methodological innovations, Dr. Murphy has significantly shaped her field through leadership in establishing rigorous frameworks for sequential decision-making in healthcare, fostering extensive collaborations between statisticians, clinicians, and computer scientists to translate theoretical advances into practical clinical tools. Her exceptional contributions were recognized with a MacArthur Fellowship in 2013 and election to both the National Academy of Medicine in 2014 and the National Academy of Sciences in 2016, underscoring the transformative nature of her work in personalized medicine. Currently directing the Statistical Reinforcement Learning Lab at Harvard, she continues to pioneer new approaches at the intersection of statistics, machine learning, and mobile health technology, with ongoing research focused on refining Micro-Randomized Trials for optimizing digital interventions delivered via smartphones and wearables. Dr. Murphy's vision for data-driven, adaptive healthcare interventions continues to inspire a new generation of researchers while directly informing clinical practice for patients managing chronic health conditions across the globe.
