Statistician Susan Murphy to present 2026 Chemerda Lectures in Science on Nov. 4, 5
Susan Murphy, Mallinckrodt Professor of Statistics and of Computer Science, and associate faculty in the Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence at Harvard University, will present the 2026 John M. Chemerda Lectures in Science on Nov. 4 and 5 on the Penn State University Park campus. The free public lectures are sponsored by the Penn State Eberly College of Science.
Murphy will give a public lecture intended for a general audience, titled “Online Reinforcement Learning in Personalizing Digital Health Interventions,” at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 4, in 114 McAllister Building. She will also present a scientific lecture, titled “Replicability in Bandit and Reinforcement Learning Algorithms,” at 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 5, in 201 Thomas Building. All are welcome to attend either lecture.
“Online Reinforcement Learning in Personalizing Digital Health Interventions”
In this public talk, Murphy will discuss first solutions to some of the challenges we face in developing online reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms for use in personalizing digital health interventions targeting patients struggling with health problems such as substance misuse, hypertension, and bone marrow transplantation. Challenges include the need to learn when and where to provide intervention support while an individual is experiencing the intervention as well as how to learn about the usefulness of the RL algorithm between deployments.
About the speaker
Murphy’s research focuses on improving sequential, individualized decision-making in digital health. She developed the microrandomized trial for use in constructing digital health interventions; this trial design is in use across a broad range of health-related areas. Her lab develops and deploys online learning algorithms for developing personalized digital health interventions. Murphy is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine, both part of the U.S. National Academies. In 2013 she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship for her work on experimental designs to inform sequential decision-making.
About the John M. Chemerda Lectures
The John M. Chemerda Lectures in Science are named in honor of John M. Chemerda, a chemist who earned his bachelor's degree at Penn State in 1935. Murphy is the fourth statistician to present the Chemerda Lectures, with statisticians Larry Wasserman of Carnegie Mellon University presenting in 2018, Stephen M. Stigler from the University of Chicago presenting in 2010, and John F. Nash Jr. of Princeton University presenting in 2003.