Dr. Elise Smith is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine and Population Health (PMPH) with a membership in The Institute of Translational Science and The Institute for Bioethics & Health Humanities. She completed her Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the Bioethics Division of the National Institutes of Health's (NIH), National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) funded by a Partnership Award provided by the Fonds de Recherche du Québec (Quebec Health Research Funding Council) and the NIH. More specifically, her post-doctoral studies included the first large scale international survey research analyzing the various factors that influence ethical authorship distribution (e.g. seniority, power, gender).
As a bioethics scholar with a background in philosophy, law, and the social sciences, she works on projects in research ethics, research integrity and public health ethics. Versed in both empirical and theoretical research, she seeks to understand the application of ideals, guidelines and policies in scientific research to better understand their effectiveness, limitations, biases and ethical implications. She has participated in knowledge transfer activities regarding responsible conduct of research at the Université de Montréal, NIEHS, NIH, Duke University, University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University. As a research ethics consultant at UTMB, Dr Smith is assisting in developing, applying, and evaluating research ethics approaches in translational team science.