Byran Smucker, PhD

Biographical Statement

I am a senior scientist at Henry Ford Health in Detroit, providing support to PIs in study design and analysis, and conducting statistical research in experimental design and related areas. Previously, I was professor of statistics at Miami University in Oxford, OH. I am also husband to Amy, father of Xavier, Nicolas, Eloise, and Malachi, and a follower of Jesus. I love basketball, my annual reading list, and a good game of strategy.

I earned my PhD in Statistics and Operations Research from The Pennsylvania State University in 2010, with advisors Enrique del Castillo and James Rosenberger. I study and support the design and analysis of biomedical experiments, in areas as varied as tissue regeneration, brain cancer, and next-generation antimicrobial strategies. My statistical research has focused largely on both the construction and analysis of screening designs, including work on design and analysis of high-throughput screens, but also on response surface methods and statistical pedagogy. Much of my work involves applied optimization, and I also have worked in applied predictive modeling, statistical engineering, and data privacy.

Titles

• Senior Scientist, Biostatistics

Research Interests

• Experimental design, High-throughput screening, Applied predictive modeling

Awards & Honors

• 2022 Lloyd S. Nelson Award, for "Response surface models: To reduce or not to reduce?" (with David Edwards and Maria Weese), given to the paper appearing in the 2021 Journal of Quality Technology with the "greatest immediate impact to practitioners.
• 2nd place, 2021 Syngenta Crop Challenge in Analytics (with Mingshi Cui and Kunting Qi)