In 1994 after receiving his Ph.D. in statistics, Brian Smith went to work at the University of Louisville Kidney Disease Program, where his primary focus was to work with a pharmacokineticist, Michael Brier, to compare neural networks to Nonlinear Mixed Effect Models for predicting drug concentration in kidney patients. This led to his current career in drug develop starting at Eli Lilly for 9 years, Amgen for 9 years, and Novartis for 10 years. In that time Brian focused in early development and clinical pharmacology. There were plenty to things to learn and research with this focus. Whether you consider his seminal paper on dose proportionality, his joint work with Alex Dmitrienko on the analysis of QT interval data, his twelve years as an associate editor of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, his ten years as an associate editor of Statistics and Biopharmaceutical Research, his inception, organization, and leadership of a joint statistics/pharmacometrics conference, PaSiPhIC, which continued 4 years, it is evident that Brian is a respected and knowledgeable leader in the statistics, early development, and clinical pharmacology space. He has been an important resource for those that have worked directly with him. At his retirement from Novartis in 2025, the following was one of many kind notes sent to him

Early development will not be the same without you. I'll greatly miss your advice and support for all statistical questions - you always made time and you took every question seriously. Your style of giving advice but leaving it open to the receiver what to do with that advice, made me ask you many more things, than I would have done otherwise. I have also always greatly valued your awareness of cultural differences, which created a feeling of safety when talking to you about personal matters. I still think of that book club about cultural differences frequently, it was such a great idea and a mind-opener for many inter-European differences. Thank you for all the wisdom that you have shared during your time here. From now on I'll have to think "what would Brian say?" but I doubt it'll get me as far as actually hearing your advice.

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