Executive Leadership
Jack W. Smith, M.D., Ph.D.
Dean, School of Biomedical Informatics
E-mail: Jack.W.Smith@uth.tmc.edu
Jack W. Smith, MD, PhD was recruited from Ohio State University in 1998 to become the first chairman of the Department of Health Informatics at The University of Texas School of Allied Health at Houston. He was instrumental in recruiting many of the original faculty. In 2001, he was appointed as the school’s associate dean for research. Then, in January 2003, Smith became interim dean, following the School of Allied Health’s transformation to the School of Health Information Sciences. Less than two years later, he was appointed full time dean following a national search to fill the position.
Smith has a faculty appointment at the UT Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Houston (GSBS) and is an adjoint professor for the UT Inter-institutional Department of Biomedical Engineering. He is the co-director of the bioinformatics component for the Center for Clinical Translational Sciences (CCTS) in the health science center, where he joined a large team of medical professionals from The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, MD Anderson Cancer Center, and the Memorial Hermann Hospital System who helped establish the center.
He is also a fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics, a national chair for the American Medical Informatics Association’s Committee on Core Competencies in Informatics, and the training program director for the W.M. Keck Center for Interdisciplinary Bioscience, Gulf Coast Consortia.
Smith is a former team leader of medical informatics and healthcare systems at NASA’s Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. His work focused on creating a risk assessment model to be used in the design and implementation of healthcare systems to support extended human exploration missions to the Moon and Mars.
Smith received his medical degree from West Virginia University Medical School in 1977, and his undergraduate degree in physics from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Board certified in pathology, Smith earned his doctorate in computer science in the area of artificial intelligence from Ohio State University in 1986.
