Mary Dupuis Sammel is a biostatistician, who works as a professor in the Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. As well as doing research on theoretical statistics and reproductive health,she also raises guide dogs and has published research on their upbringing.
Sammel graduated from the University of Michigan in 1986 with a bachelor's degree in statistics and completed a master's degree in applied statistics in 1988 at the same university. She did her doctoral studies at the Harvard School of Public Health, completing a Sc.D. in biostatistics in 1995.
Sammel and her family have been active at fostering future guide dogs, from infancy through puppyhood until they are ready to go on to more intensive training with The Seeing Eye as a guide dog.
With a student, Emily Bray, Sammel studied the effects of dogs' mothers' behavior on the dogs. Their work showed that dogs with overly-attentive mothers tended to be less effective as guide dogs,and less successful at completing guide dog training.
In 2015, Sammel was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association.