PeopleofSuperintelligence

Builder

Max Kuhn

Also known as Max Kühn, topepo

Max Kuhn is a statistician and software engineer whose R packages, including caret and the tidymodels framework, help people train and tune predictive models. After earning a Ph.D. in biostatistics at Virginia Commonwealth University in 1998, he worked on diagnostics at Becton-Dickinson and on predictive modeling at Pfizer Global R&D until 2016. His 2008 paper in the Journal of Statistical Software introduced caret, and Applied Predictive Modeling, which he wrote with Kjell Johnson in 2013, won the American Statistical Association's Ziegel award. He joined RStudio in 2016, announced the tidymodels package in 2018, and coauthored Feature Engineering and Selection and Tidy Modeling with R. Today he is a principal software engineer for tidymodels at Posit, and with Johnson he is writing Applied Machine Learning for Tabular Data online.

Works
157
Citations
43,399
h-index
32
Badges
Links
Website, LinkedIn and GitHub

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 1989–1998

    A biostatistics Ph.D. at VCU

    He studies mathematics at Virginia Commonwealth University from 1989 to 1994 and earns a Ph.D. in its Department of Biostatistics in 1998. His dissertation, advised by Hans Carter and Raymond Myers, incorporates noise factors into survival and generalized linear models.

  2. 1998–2016

    Statistics at BD and Pfizer

    He joins Becton-Dickinson Diagnostic Systems as a senior statistician in 1998 and works on predictive algorithms and molecular diagnostics for infectious diseases. In 2005, he moves to Pfizer Global R&D's Nonclinical Statistics group in Groton, Connecticut, rising from associate director to senior director in 2015 while applying predictive modeling to patient analytics, chemistry and manufacturing.

  3. 2008

    The caret package

    In 2008, he publishes Building Predictive Models in R Using the caret Package in the Journal of Statistical Software. Short for classification and regression training, caret simplifies model training and tuning across a wide variety of modeling techniques in R.

  4. 2013–2015

    Applied Predictive Modeling

    He and Kjell Johnson publish the book Applied Predictive Modeling in 2013. It wins the American Statistical Association's Ziegel award, which recognizes the best book reviewed in Technometrics in 2015.

  5. 2016–2018

    RStudio and the tidymodels package

    In November 2016, he leaves drug discovery at Pfizer and joins RStudio to work on modeling-related R packages and infrastructure. In August 2018, he announces the tidymodels package on CRAN, which installs and loads tidyverse packages for modeling and analysis.

  6. 2019–2022

    Feature engineering and tidy modeling books

    Feature Engineering and Selection, written with Kjell Johnson, is published in 2019. In September 2020, he and Julia Silge announce Tidy Modeling with R, a book on using tidymodels, and O'Reilly Media publishes it in July 2022.

  7. 2023

    Principal software engineer at Posit

    He moves from software engineer to principal software engineer at Posit, formerly RStudio, in 2023.

  8. July 2026

    Tidymodels and tabular machine learning

    In July 2026, he is Principal Software Engineer (tidymodels) at Posit PBC. With Kjell Johnson, he is writing Applied Machine Learning for Tabular Data and publishing it at aml4td.org as they write it.

Career

  1. NowPosit Software, PBCPrincipal Software Engineer (tidymodels)
  2. From 2016RStudioSoftware Engineer
  3. 2005–2016PfizerAssociate Director, Senior Director
  4. 1998–2005Becton, Dickinson and CompanySenior Statistician

Education

  1. 1998Virginia Commonwealth UniversityPhD
  2. 1994Virginia Commonwealth University

From the biography and OpenAlex affiliations (the years of papers that list the organization), so some years are approximate.

Most-cited works

  1. Welcome to the Tidyverse2019 · The Journal of Open Source Software · 21,956 citationsWith Alex Hayes
  2. Building Predictive Models in R Using the caret Package2008 · Journal of Statistical Software · 9,897 citations
  3. Applied Predictive Modeling2013 · Springer eBooks · 6,762 citations
  4. Plasma multianalyte profiling in mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer disease2012 · Neurology · 241 citations
  5. Multiplexed Immunoassay Panel Identifies Novel CSF Biomarkers for Alzheimer's Disease Diagnosis and Prognosis2011 · PLoS ONE · 237 citations

From OpenAlex, as of 21 October 2026.

  1. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes Pfizer. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  2. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI each year from 1955 to 2025, tracing the shift from university labs to companies.
  3. The United States employs an estimated 48% of people shaping AIWe estimate where the people shaping AI work today, how universities, companies and research institutes split across countries, and how country shares have changed since the 1960s.
  4. 43% of living people shaping AI work outside their country of birthWe estimate that 43% of living people shaping AI work outside their country of birth (520 of 1,198 people with known birth and employment countries).

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Max Kuhn yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Education – Max Kuhn max-kuhn.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  2. Experience – Max Kuhn max-kuhn.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  3. About — Applied Predictive Modeling appliedpredictivemodeling.com. Checked 20 October 2026.
  4. Building Predictive Models in R Using the caret Package | Journal of Statistical Software jstatsoft.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  5. Max Kuhn | Posit posit.co. Checked 20 October 2026.
  6. Max Kuhn max-kuhn.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  7. Working at RStudio | R-bloggers r-bloggers.com. Checked 20 October 2026.
  8. The tidymodels Package tidyverse.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  9. Competitive Modeling of Outcomes for Prediction - RStudio cloud.rstudio.com. Checked 20 October 2026.
  10. Feature Engineering & Selection – tidymodels tidymodels.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  11. Introducing our new book, Tidy Modeling with R | R-bloggers r-bloggers.com. Checked 20 October 2026.
  12. Tidy Modeling with R: A Framework for Modeling in the Tidyverse, ISBN 9781492096481 - Better Read Than Dead Bookstore Newtown betterread.com.au. Checked 20 October 2026.
  13. Applied Machine Learning for Tabular Data aml4td.org. Checked 20 October 2026.