Carnegie Mellon University

Samuel Burns

Project Director, Digital Transformation and Innovation Center; Director, Products & Technology, Emerging Technology Practice, PwC

Bio

Sam is a director in the PwC Emerging Technology practice within the Products & Technology group. His expertise is in mathematical and computational science, and he has over 20 years of experience in simulation and system dynamics modeling. Sam has led the technical development of the Bodylogical human physiology simulator model, Behavior Predictor synthetic healthcare population, Provider Demand Model, and PwC’s computational modeling response to the COVID pandemic. He currently leads the firm’s healthcare analytics group and the broader development of synthetic data across industries. 

Prior to joining the firm, Sam worked as a research scientist in the department of Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University where he constructed neurological network data analysis tools for epileptics using an individual’s brain recordings to locate the origin of their seizures. He has also worked in electrophysiology, modeling how information is communicated between brain regions in data recorded from the visual cortex.  

Sam completed his postdoctoral training at New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Science, holds a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Columbia University, a Master of Science in Applied Mathematics (Part III of the Mathematical Tripos) from the University of Cambridge, UK, and a B.S. in Physics from Oberlin College.