Don Berry, Ph.D. / Founder & Senior Statistical Scientist

Donald Berry is Founder of Berry Consultants, LLC, and a professor in the Department of Biostatistics of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. He was founding Chair of this department in 1999. Dr. Berry received his Ph.D. in statistics from Yale University, and previously served on the faculty at the University of Minnesota and at Duke University. He has held endowed faculty positions at Duke University and M.D. Anderson.

Dr. Berry is a well known developer of statistical theory and methodology. He has designed and supervised the conduct of hundreds of innovative clinical trials, including Bayesian adaptive trials in cancer and other diseases. He has developed Bayesian adaptive designs that efficiently use information that accrues over the course of the trial. These trials minimize sample size while increasing the likelihood of detecting therapeutic activity. A principal focus of his research is the use of biomarkers for learning which patients benefit from which therapies, based on molecular markers and phenotype. In particular, he designed and is a co-PI of I-SPY 2 in high-risk early breast cancer, a trial that was the focus of the two lead articles with two editorials in the July 2016 NEJM. He has designed Phase 3 Bayesian adaptive platform clinical trials in glioblastoma, GBM-AGILE and pancreatic cancer.

He has authored many books on statistics and biostatistics and has over 400 peer-reviewed publications. He is a Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher in recognition of ranking among the top 1% of most cited researchers in Clinical Medicine. He is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and the International Society of Bayesian Analysis. He has received numerous research grants from the U.S. NIH and NSF.