Education
Smith completed his bachelor"s degree at the University of Leeds in 1977 and in 1981 gained a Doctor of Philosophy in Virology whilst in London at the National Institute for Medical Research.
Smith completed his bachelor"s degree at the University of Leeds in 1977 and in 1981 gained a Doctor of Philosophy in Virology whilst in London at the National Institute for Medical Research.
Since 1 October 2011 he is Head of the Department of Pathology at the University of Cambridge and a Principal Research Fellow of the Wellcome Trust. Before that, he was Head of the Department of Virology at Imperial College London. Between 1981–1984, while he was working in the United States under the National Institutes of Health, developed and pioneered the use of genetically engineered live vaccines.
Between 1985–1989 he lectured at the University of Cambridge.
During 2002 sequenced a strain of Camelpox showing how close it was to human Smallpox. Prior to 2002, he was based at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology at the University of Oxford.
Between 1988–1992 his work was funded by the Jenner Fellowship from The Lister Institute. He became a governor of the Institute in 2003.
In 2002, was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.
In 2011 he was elected as a fellow of the German Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina). was editor-in-chief of the Journal of General Virology up until 2008 and chairs the World Health Organization"s Advisory Committee on Variola Virus Research. Until 2011 he was the Head of the Department of Virology at Imperial College London. As of 2011 became president of the International Union of Microbiological Societies.
Andrew H. Wyllie had been the previous holder of the Head of the Department of Pathology at Cambridge until retirement in September 2011.
Royal Society]
In 2009 Smith was elected as one of the founding members of the new European Academy of Microbiology and the following year was elected as a corresponding member of the Gesellschaft für Virologie.