Professor Geoffrey L. Smith

Head of department at Department of Pathology, University of Cambridge

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Professor of Pathology and Head of Department, Department of Pathology, University of Cambridge

Geoffrey Smith is Head of Department, Professor of Pathology and a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow in the Department of Pathology at the University of Cambridge. He obtained his PhD (1981) for work with influenza virus at NIMR, London. Then as a postdoc in the laboratory of Bernard Moss at NIH, USA (1981-84), together with Michael Mackett, he developed vaccinia virus (the smallpox vaccine) as an expression vector and established the use of genetically engineered viruses as live vaccines. He continued working with poxviruses after returning to UK at Cambridge (1985-9), Oxford (1989-2000), Imperial College London (2000-11) and now as Head of the Department of Pathology in Cambridge. His research studies the interactions of poxviruses with the host cell and immune system.

He has several roles promoting microbiology and advising on science policy. Currently, he is President of the International Union of Microbiological Societies, Chairman of the WHO Advisory Committee for Variola Virus (smallpox) Research, and a member of the Wellcome Trust Expert Review Group. Formerly, he was Chairman of the Royal Society Committee for Scientific Aspects of International Security, a member of the Royal Society Science Policy Advisory Group, and a Governor of the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine. He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (2002), the Institute of Biology (2002), the Royal Society (2003), a Founding Member of the European Academy of Microbiology (2008) and a member of Leopoldina - the German National Academy of Sciences (2011). In 2005 he was awarded the Feldberg Foundation Prize in Medical and Biological Science and in 2012 the GlaxoSmithKline / American Society for Microbiology International Member of the Year Award.