Professor Austin Smith, PhD FRS FRSE

Medical Research Council Professor & Director,
Wellcome Trust Centre for Stem Cell Research, University of Cambridge,
Tennis Court Road, Cambridge, CB2 1QR, United Kingdom
Austin.Smith@cscr.cam.ac.uk - PA email: agssec@cscr.cam.ac.uk
Tel +44 (0)1223 760233
Fax +44 (0)1223 760241

Professor Smith was awarded an MRC Research Professorship in 2003. In 2006 he moved to the University of Cambridge where he is currently Director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Stem Cell Research. He coordinated the European Commission integrated project EuroStemCell (2004-2008) and currently coordinates the EuroSyStem project (2008-2012). Professor Smith is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, an elected member of EMBO, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of London.
Professor Austin Smith was captivated by pluripotency and stem cell self-renewal by undergraduate lectures from Professor Chris Graham in Oxford. He pursued this interest through PhD studies with Martin Hooper at the University of Edinburgh from 1982-86. Following postdoctoral research at the University of Oxford with John Heath, he returned to Edinburgh in 1990 as a Group Leader at the Centre for Genome Research. In 1996, he was appointed Director of the Centre, which under his leadership became the first Institute for Stem Cell Research in the United Kingdom.