Susan A. Murphy

This information is accurate as of the fellowship year indicated for each fellow.

Susan A. Murphy is a Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at the Radcliffe Institute and a professor of statistics and computer science at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Her lab develops data analysis methods and experimental designs to improve real-time sequential decision making in mobile health—in particular, algorithms that can be deployed on wearable devices—to deliver individually tailored treatments. The micro-randomized trial designed by her lab for use in mobile health interventions is in use across a broad range of health-related areas. In these trials, each participant can be randomized or re-randomized hundreds of times.

During her fellowship, Murphy is focusing on developing algorithms and data-analysis methods that facilitate and accommodate using other individuals’ data in order to personalize interventions in real time.

Murphy is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and of the National Academy of Medicine, both of the US National Academies. In 2013, she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship for her work on experimental designs to inform sequential decision making. Murphy earned her PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.