Tara Smith | |
---|---|
Alma mater | University of Toledo Yale University |
Scientific career | |
Institutions | University of Iowa Kent State University |
Website | taracsmith.com/ |
Tara C. Smith is an American epidemiologist and science communicator. She is a professor at the Kent State University College of Public Health who studies zoonotic infections. Smith was the first to identify strains of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus associated with livestock in the United States.
Smith has a Bachelor of Science in biology from Yale University.[1][2] She earned her PhD in microbiology at the University of Toledo, where she investigated Streptococcus pyogenes.[1][2][3] She completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship in infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Michigan.[2]
In 2004 Smith joined the University of Iowa College of Public Health.[4] She has received over $3 million in research funding, primarily from Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, United States Department of Agriculture and National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.[4][5]
Smith identified that 45% of pig farmers and 49% of hogs farmers carried Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).[6][7][8] She went on to identify that almost 40% of people with MRSA contain the strain associated with livestock.[9][10] The work was described as one of the most comprehensive investigations into the spread of MRSA by the journal Nature.[11] She is distinguishing the Staphylococcus aureus strains around Iowa City, by characterizing the DNA around several places in the genome.[11] She compared strains related to ST398, a sequence type that is associated with livestock but not expected to cause infection, from around the world.[12] She found that meat that is sold with the claim it contains no antibiotics contains the highest levels of the garden-type of S. aureus.[13] Her research has been covered by The New York Times.[6] Smith has also studied and written about vaccine hesitancy.[14]
She joined the Kent State University College of Public Health in 2013 as an associate professor.[4][14] In 2015 Smith was appointed an American Society for Microbiology Distinguished Lecturer.[15] In 2017 she became a full professor at Kent State.[14] Her light-hearted Christmas contribution[16] to the British Medical Journal on the likelihood of a Zombie apocalypse was covered extensively in the mainstream media.[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][excessive citations] Following the Zika virus outbreak, Smith wrote several articles to provide advice for members of the public.[26][27] She went on to use zombies to demonstrate how diseases were spread.[28][29][30] Smith has written books on Ebola virus, Streptococcus pyogenes and S. agalactiae.[31][32][33][34]
In late February 2020 the Wall Street Journal called her "a prominent infectious-disease specialist" when reporting on her tweet[35] criticizing the White House's attempt to control messaging about the novel coronavirus outbreak.[36]
Smith takes part in several initiatives to improve the public understanding of science.[37] She writes a regular column for Self.[2] She started the science blog Aetiology in 2005.[38] Her research has appeared in the popular science books Pig Tales: An Omnivore's Quest for Sustainable Meat and Superbug: the Fatal Menace of MRSA.[39][40] She has featured on podcasts, including Science for the People, Talk Nerdy and the Meet the Microbiologist podcast of the American Society for Microbiology.[41][42][43][44] She has been interviewed by Gizmodo, New Statesman and the Los Angeles Times.[45][46][47]
Smith lives with her partner and three children in rural Ohio.[2]