Professor Austin Smith

Professor Austin Smith FRS is the Living Systems Institute Director and Medical Research Council Professor. 

He studied Biochemistry at the University of Oxford where he became fascinated by pluripotency. He pursued this interest in PhD studies with Professor Martin Hooper at the University of Edinburgh and post-doctoral research in Oxford with Professor John Heath. Austin then joined the Centre for Genome Research in Edinburgh as a Group Leader. In 1995, he became Director of Centre which he transformed into the Institute for Stem Cell Research. In 2006, Austin moved to the University of Cambridge and was founding Director of the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute until 2016. In 2019, he took up the post of Director of the Living Systems Institute at the University of Exeter.

Professor Smith welcomes enquiries from prospective PhD students and post-doctoral researchers, including computational biologists, bioengineers and bioinformaticians as well as wet lab researchers. Additionally, he welcomes expressions of interest for GW4-CAT PhD Programme for Health Professionals – two clinical fellows and one MB PhD student have previously completed successful PhDs in his research group.