UTS appoints senior UK academic leader as Dean of Faculty of Science

Experienced academic leader and highly-respected biological scientist Professor Judith Smith has been appointed as the next Dean of the Faculty of Science at the University of Technology Sydney.

Professor Smith is currently Dean of the School of Environment and Life Sciences at the University of Salford, UK. She will join UTS in August following the impending retirement of Professor Bruce Milthorpe.

UTS Provost Peter Booth said the university was "very fortunate to have attracted a candidate of Judith's calibre to this very important position".

"She has over 15 years' experience in leadership roles as a senior academic, both at Salford and at the University of Leeds, and is very accomplished in research administration, the development of postgraduate training and the promotion of inclusive teaching, to name just a few areas," he said.

Professor Smith is a biological scientist who initially trained at the universities of Edinburgh (BSc Physiology) and Cambridge (PhD) before completing postdoctoral research on malaria at Imperial College.

Moving to take up a lectureship in Leeds, she developed her research on the relationship between parasite diversity, transmission and disease. She also led development of programs for early stage researchers serving as Director of the Graduate School. Professor Smith joined the University of Salford in 2010 as Head of the School of Environment & Life Sciences and was Dean of the College of Science and Technology from 2013-15. 

She has contributed to research strategy through work with the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), initially on the £20m Post Genomics and Proteomics Thematic Programme Steering Group and more recently as a member of the NERC Panel of Chairs – a body comprised of the top scientists in the field. Judith also co-ordinated a major EU-funded €2,355,000 project to deliver Marie Curie Fellowships for training in advanced genetic analysis, and, between 2014 and 2016, was President of the British Society for Parasitology.