Brad Smith

Brad Smith joined the Nebraska Athletic Performance Laboratory as a Senior Performance Analyst in November of 2021, following nearly four years as a Player Development Analyst for the New York Yankees. Prior to these positions, he served as Assistant Director of Sports Analytics and as a Research Assistant in the Brain, Behavior and Emotion Lab at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln (UNL).

From 2011 to 2016, Smith was an Assistant Baseball Coach at UNL after spending nearly three years working as an actuary. He earned the Associate of the Society of Actuaries (ASA) designation before returning to graduate school.

Smith holds a B.S. and M.S. in Mathematics from Pittsburg State University, an M.S. in Statistics from the University of Nebraska, and completed his Ph.D. in Educational Psychology with a specialization in Qualitative, Quantitative, and Psychometric Methods and a minor in Statistics from the University of Nebraska in December of 2024. In addition to his research and analytics work, Smith serves as an instructor in the Master of Data Science program at Northwestern University.

Brad and his wife, Kessy, have two sons, Stanton and Seton.