Austin Schumacher

Austin Schumacher, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Health Metrics Sciences at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. He leads the Population, Fertility, and Mortality research team, an outstanding group of researchers and staff that develops methodology and produces estimates for the demographic components of the Global Burden of Disease study. His own research interests focus on developing statistical methods and modeling frameworks to improve estimation of demographic and health indicators on both local and global scales, and subsequently utilizing this research to increase understanding and ultimately improve health and wellbeing. He specializes in Bayesian methods, small area estimation, and general techniques for biostatistics and data science.

Before joining the faculty at IHME, Dr. Schumacher received his PhD in Biostatistics from the University of Washington. During his graduate research, he worked on many projects relating to statistical methods development for global health problems, such as age- and cause-specific child mortality estimation, joint small area estimation models for multiple outcomes, and analysis of complex survey data. Prior to his PhD, Dr. Schumacher was a Post-Bachelor Fellow at IHME on the team he now leads.