Brian E. Perron

Brian E. Perron, PhD, is a professor at the University of Michigan School of Social Work. Perron's recent work focuses on helping community-based and mission-driven organizations use artificial intelligence and data to improve service delivery and other core business processes. Natural language processing and the fine-tuning and deployment of small, local models sit at the center of this work and run through most of it. He builds user-friendly and sustainable data management systems, increasingly powered by models that run on an organization's own hardware; designs data pipelines that convert scattered administrative records and unstructured text into research-ready and decision-ready resources; applies text analysis to make large document collections searchable and interpretable; and creates interactive data visualizations that make findings accessible to non-technical users. Throughout, he favors small, local and accountable systems that keep sensitive data secure and every step of the analysis open to inspection, while building organizational capacity to promote data-driven decision-making. Perron helped establish and works actively with the Child & Adolescent Data Lab, where he examines services for vulnerable youth and families in the child welfare system, with the ultimate goal of improving service outcomes. For more than a decade, this work has included directing the data systems through which the lab receives and manages population-level administrative data in continuous partnership with the state of Michigan. He also provides fractional AI advisory services to mission-driven organizations, helping them adopt these tools responsibly and independently of vendors.