Susan A. Murphy

Susan A. Murphy is the Mallinckrodt Professor of Statistics and Computer Science at Harvard University, with joint appointments at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and as Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at the Radcliffe Institute. She leads the Statistical Reinforcement Learning Lab, focusing on developing algorithms for sequential decision-making in health.

Her research specializes in reinforcement learning applications for digital health, including clinical trial design (particularly micro-randomized trials), Just-in-Time Adaptive Interventions (JITAIs), causal inference methods, and mobile health optimization. Her work bridges statistical methods and computer science to create personalized health interventions.

Awards and honors include:

• MacArthur Fellowship (2013)
• Elected Member of the National Academy of Sciences
• Elected Member of the National Academy of Medicine
• Past President of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics

Dr. Murphy leads multiple NIH-funded grants supporting her work on adaptive interventions, including projects from NIDA, NHLBI, NIBIB and NIDCR. She advises students through her lab and collaborates with research centers including mDOT and the Center for Intelligent Systems.