Ying Yuan

Ying Yuan, PhD is a Professor of Biostatistics at MD Anderson Cancer Center and one of the world's leading experts in statistical design of early-phase oncology clinical trials. He is the inventor of the Bayesian Optimal Interval (BOIN) design, which has become one of the most widely adopted dose escalation frameworks globally, implemented in hundreds of phase I trials across industry and academia. The BOIN design offers the practical simplicity of rule-based designs (like 3+3) while achieving near-optimal operating characteristics approaching the continual reassessment method (CRM). Dr. Yuan also developed the modified Toxicity Probability Interval (mTPI) design and its successor mTPI-2, as well as the BOIN12 extension for efficacy-toxicity tradeoff optimization. His methodological contributions span accelerated titration designs, keyboard designs, and drug combination dose-finding. He has published landmark papers in statistics, biostatistics, and clinical oncology journals, and his open-source software (BOIN suite on CRAN and MD Anderson Phase I Design website) has enabled global adoption of his methods. Dr. Yuan has collaborated on over 100 phase I trials and consults with the FDA on adaptive dose-finding design standards.