Austin Smith

Who is Austin Smith?

Austin Gerard Smith is a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Stem Cell Research at the University of Cambridge. He is notable for his pioneering work on the biology of embryonic stem cells.

Austin Smith obtained his doctoral degree from the University of Edinburgh in 1986. He then carried out postdoctoral research at the University of Oxford, before joining the Centre for Genome Research at the University of Edinburgh as a group leader. In 1996, he was appointed director of the Centre, which became the Institute for Stem Cell Research under his leadership. He remained as director of the Institute until his move to Cambridge in 2006.

In 2003, Smith was awarded an MRC Research Professorship and elected to the Royal Society of Edinburgh. And in 2006, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 2010, he was co-recipient of the Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine along with French cardiologist Michel Haissaguerre.

In February 2010, together with 13 other leading stem cell researchers, he wrote an open letter to journal editors to voice the opinion that obstructive reviews by a small number of researchers in the field were hindering publication of novel stem cell research.