Peter Smits
Principal Business Analyst at Wizards of the Coast
Seattle, Washington, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolPeter Smits is a Principal Business Analyst and data scientist with a PhD in Evolutionary Biology and 12 years of experience translating complex Bayesian models into product and research impact across healthcare, shipping, advertising, and academia. He specializes in hierarchical and generalized linear models, survival and longitudinal analysis, and reproducible statistical workflows implemented in Stan and R, with a track record of productionizing analyses for medical research and ad performance. His background in paleobiology yields unusual strengths in modeling sparse, noisy, and temporally clustered events—skills he has applied from predicting species extinctions to optimizing display advertising and healthcare real-world evidence. Peter has moved between research and industry roles at organizations like Truveta, Amazon Advertising, and Wizards of the Coast, combining deep statistical rigor with product-minded delivery. Based in Seattle, he brings both hands-on technical expertise and experience mentoring cross-functional teams to drive defensible, well-documented analytics in high-stakes domains.
12 years of coding experience
10 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Science - BS Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Bachelor of Science - BS Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at University of WashingtonPaleobiology Database Intensive Workshop in Analytical Palaeobiology, Paleobiology Database Intensive Workshop in Analytical Palaeobiology at Macquarie UniversityDoctor of Philosophy - PhD Evolutionary Biology, Doctor of Philosophy - PhD Evolutionary Biology at University of ChicagoMaster of Science - MS Biology/Biological Sciences General, Master of Science - MS Biology/Biological Sciences General at Monash University
French
Github Skills (27)
r-package10
missing-data9
bayesian-data-analysis9
tidyverse9
tidymodels9
jags9
stan9
bayesian8
dplyr8
tidy8
brms8
r8
traits7
visualization7
biodiversity7
Programming languages (3)
Github contributions (5)
psmits/cosmo_prov
Aug 2013 - Aug 2016
Contributions:1 release, 289 commits, 9 pushes in 3 years
psmits/shape_identification
Jun 2017 - Mar 2019
Contributions:1 release, 30 pushes, 1 tag in 1 year 9 months
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