Martyn Smith
Professor of Toxicology
PHONE: (510) 642-8770
FAX: (510) 642-0427
LOCATION: Room 215A Hildebrand Hall MC7356
E-MAIL: martynts@berkeley.edu
Martyn T. Smith, Ph.D., is currently employed as Professor of Toxicology in the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley. He was born in Lincoln, England and grew up in Boston, Lincolnshire attending Boston Grammar School. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Biology with honors in 1977 from Queen Elizabeth College at the University of London, England and his Ph.D. in Biochemistry in 1980 from St. Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College, London. He underwent a year of post-doctoral training in toxicology with Professor Sten Orrenius at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. Upon returning to the University of London in 1981 he helped teach the first undergraduate degree in Toxicology and Pharmacology at the School of Pharmacy, University of London. He currently teaches Advanced Toxicology to approx. 25 graduate students and Introduction to Toxicology to ~250 Undergraduates each year.
Professor Smith came to the United States in 1982 as an Assistant Professor of Toxicology at Berkeley. In 1987 he was promoted to tenure and became an Associate Professor. Since 1987 he has been the Director of the NIEHS Superfund Research Program at Berkeley. In 1990 he chaired the groundbreaking meeting “Application of Molecular Biomarkers in Epidemiology” which brought together laboratory scientists with epidemiologists. In 1992 he was promoted to Full Professor and has served as Head or Deputy Head of the Division of Environmental Health Sciences and Faculty Chair of the School of Public Health. In 1994 he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for his outstanding contributions to the field of environmental toxicology, especially with regard to our understanding of the mechanisms of benzene toxicity. In 2010 he received the Childrens Environmental Health Network outstanding researcher award.
He is a member of the Editorial Boards of several journals and serves on the Scientific Council of IARC, WHO and on the Advisory Boards of Hugef in Turin, the Envirogenomarkers project in Athens and the MRC-HPA Environment Center at Imperial College London. From 2000-2003 he served as a member of the National Advisory Environmental Health Sciences Council of the National Institutes of Health. He has authored over 300 publications in the scientific literature and has served as a consultant or grant reviewer to many institutions including various branches of NIH, the US EPA, CalEPA, the UK Medical Research Council, the Governments of Norway and Australia, the Department of Justice and numerous law firms. He has provided expert testimony in litigation on multiple issues and has qualified as an expert in toxicology in courts in several states. His research interests include the causes of chronic disease and the exposome. Other passions in his life include tennis and soccer.