Smith F. Heavner, PhD, RN is the Senior Scientific Director for Real-World Evidence at the Critical Path Institute, a public-private partnership with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. With a clinical background in emergency and critical care nursing, he completed his PhD in Applied Health Research and Evaluation at Clemson University, where he was honored with the Centennial Alumni Award in October 2024. Additionally, Dr. Heavner completed a one-year post-graduate training program in clinical trial design at Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Heavner is an adjunct assistant professor of evaluation science in the Department of Public Health Sciences at Clemson University and holds additional adjunct faculty positions at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville and the James E. Rogers College of Law at the University of Arizona. He has been instrumental in securing over $35 million in research funding and has authored more than 30 peer-reviewed publications, highlighting his expertise in extracting, harmonizing, and analyzing data from electronic health records.
Leveraging his nursing experience, Dr. Heavner works to build robust and high-quality databases and provides critical insights to studies utilizing real-world data. As an active member of SCCM, he contributes to Discovery's Data Science Campaign, serving as a subject matter expert for the Data Outcomes and Definitions working group and co-leading the Panel on Data Sharing and Harmonization. He also represents SCCM Discovery on the Common Data Elements Steering Committee for the National Trauma Research Repository, a collaboration with the U.S. Department of Defense. Dr. Heavner's commitment to SCCM was recognized with a Presidential Citation in 2024, and he will be inducted into the American College of Critical Care Medicine in 2025.