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Dr. Steven Smith earned his M.D. from the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio. He completed a three-year internship at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, Texas in 1991. He subsequently completed a two-year fellowship in clinical endocrinology and metabolism at the Ochsner Clinic and Hospital in New Orleans, LA. Over the past 10 years, he has been a faculty member at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center. He holds the rank of Associate Professor. He is also Chief of the Inpatient Unit at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, where he has been employed in a full-time position since 1994.
His research has primarily focused upon the links between obesity and type 2 diabetes. He has published 39 peer-reviewed research journal articles, and 13 book chapters. Also, Dr. Smith is the Principal Investigator for the NIH-sponsored Project ‘Healthy Transitions’ designed to elucidate the effects of menopause on body composition, insulin action and health. He is the project leader for research sponsored by the Department of Defense that aims to use nutrition to enhance warfighter performance and he is co-PI for 2 research projects sponsored by the US Department of Agriculture: High fat diets and the metabolic syndrome (with George A Bray) and a Prospective study of the predictors of weight gain in a biracial cohort (with Eric Ravussin).
Dr. Smith has developed a variety of clinical methods at the Pennington (e.g. CT scanning, adipose tissue and skeletal muscle biopsies) and has led many investigations that have tested the reliability and validity of these methods. Dr. Smith was the first investigator at the Pennington to apply qRT-PCR and microarrays to bridge the gap between the clinic and the excellent basic science facilities at the Pennington. Therefore, Dr. Smith can provide valuable leadership for the Methods Validation and Quality Control Committee that is a part of the Human Phenotyping Core and the overall goal of translational research at the Pennington.
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