David L. DeMets, PhD is currently the Max Halperin Professor of Biostatistics, Emeritus, and former Chair of the Department of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. He received his PhD in biostatistics in 1970 from theUniversity of Minnesota. Following a postdoctoral appointment in the Division of Computer Research and Technology at the National Institutes of Health (1970-72), he spent ten years (1972-1982) at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health where he was a member of and later became chief of the Biostatistics Branch. 1982, he joined the University of Wisconsin and later founded the Department of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics which he chaired until 2009. In 2017, He became emeritus professor.
He has co-authored four texts, Fundamentals of Clinical Trials, Data Monitoring in Clinical Trials: A Case Studies Approach, Data Monitoring Committees in Clinical Trials: A Practical Perspective, and Statistical Methods for Clinical Trials He has served on numerous NIH and industry-sponsored Data Safety and Monitoring Committees for clinical trials in diverse disciplines. He served on the Board of Directors of the Society for Clinical Trials (1983-1987) American Statistical Association (1987-89), as well as having been President of the Society for Clinical Trials (1989) and President of the Eastern North American Region (ENAR) of the Biometric Society (1993). In addition, he was Elected Fellow of the International Statistics Institute in 1984, the American Statistical Association in 1986, the Association for the Advancement of Science in 1998, the Society for Clinical Trials in 2006 and the American Medical Informatics Association in 2008. In 2013, he was elected as a member of the Institute of Medicine, which is now the National Academy of Medicine.
He also received the Folkert Belzer Award for lifetime contributions from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in 2009, the Zelen Leadership Award from the Harvard School of Public Health in 2009, the NIH Robert Gordon Lectureship Award in 2001 for lifetime contributions, the Gaylord Anderson Leadership Award from the University of Minnesota in 1993 and the Gustavus Adolphus College Distinguished Alumni Award in 1990. In 2010, he was granted a Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) named professorship, one of the highest awards given to senior UW faculty, which he named the Max Halperin Professor of Biostatistics after his senior mentor while at the the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
He has also served on review panels and committees for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Canadian Institute for Health Research (CIHR) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM).
His research interests include the design, data monitoring and analysis of clinical trials, especially large Phase III randomized clinical trials. He is well known for his work on sequential statistical methods for monitoring interim data for early evidence of intervention benefit or possible harm. He has published over 50 papers in statistical methods and over 200 papers in scientific or clinical journals. Among his most notable clinical trials where he provided statistical leadership include the Beta-blocker Heart Attack Trial (BHAT) demonstrating the benefit of using beta-blockers following a heart attack to reduce mortality (1982); the Cardiac Arrhythmia Suppression Trial (CAST) which showed that a class of arrhythmia suppressing drugs actually increased mortality; the Physicians Health Study (1989) which demonstrated that aspirin reduced the risk of a heart attack in adult males; the Metoprolol Randomized Intervention Trial in Congestive Heart Failure (MERIT-HF, 1999) which demonstrated that the use of a betablocker reduced mortality and morbidity in patients with moderate to serious congestive heart failure, as did another trial; the Carvedilol Prospective Randomized Cumulative Survival Study (COPRNICUS, 2001) in more severe heart failure patients; and the Comparison of Medical Therapy, Pacing and Defibrillation in Heart Failure trial (COMPANION, 2004) which demonstrated the benefits of pacemaker and defibrillators in reducing mortality and hospitalization in congestive heart failure patients. He was also involved in the Women’s Health Initiative study (2002) which demonstrated that the use of hormone replacement therapy did not reduce cardiovascular mortality as had been widely believed. He is currently participating in clinical trials on Ebola treatment and most recently two COVID-19 clinical trials. These very influential trials are among over 100 trials for which he has made contributions to the design, interim monitoring, or analyses of the trial final results.