Our Leadership Team

Dr. Paul Muntner has over 20 years of experience conducting pharmacoepidemiology research. He earned a Master’s of Health Science in Biostatistics and Doctor of Philosophy in Epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. From 2000 to 2023, he served as a faculty member at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) School of Public Health. At UAB, he served as the Co-director of the Pharmacoepidemiology and Economics Research Unit and Associate Dean for Research at the School of Public Health. Dr. Muntner has led studies across the drug lifecycle including providing data to support FDA filings for initial approval and post-approval label expansion. He has published over 700 peer-reviewed journal articles. Outside of work, he enjoys taking cooking, pinball and cats.

Byron Jaeger has a BS in Mathematics and PhD in Biostatistics. Prior to joining Perisphere, he worked for 7 years as an Assistant Professor of Biostatistics at University of Alabama at Birmingham and at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. His work focused on machine learning, prediction models, cardiovascular disease, cognition, and statistical software. He has contributed to clinical trials such as SPRINT, LEAP, and MoTrPAC, where he developed and maintained reproducible pipelines to dynamically generate reports and statistical analyses. He also developed and maintains the aorsf R package, a unified and fast interface to work with oblique random forests. Outside of work, he enjoys taking his dog on walks and learning new cocktail recipes.

Ligong Chen has a PhD in Cell Biology and Master’s degree in biostatistics. Prior to joining Perisphere, he worked for 15 years as a statistician at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. His work has focused on cardiovascular disease, metabolic health, obesity, vaccines, and injury prevention. He has worked with a broad array of data including Medicare claims, commercial insurance claims and electronic health records, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, and National Institutes of Health-sponsored cohorts.  Outside of work, he enjoys watching sports and playing badminton.