B.S. Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, Honors / Ph.D. Biochemistry & Molecular Biology

Dr. John Smith has been a teacher and researcher both in Australia and the United States. He has also been an active sportsman for most of his life. During his tenure in Australia, he worked closely with the Australian Institute of Sport for 10 years, a national center for elite athletes. His research on exercise and the immune system, and exercise in the heat involved several hundred elite athletes from a variety of endurance sports with an emphasis on practical applications. He has published both review and experimental papers in most of the major sports medicine and physiology journals. These papers have focussed on exercise from both the health and sporting perspectives. Other publications have covered aging, women's health, hormones, and pharmacology.

Dr. Smith has also presented research regularly at major scientific meetings including symposia on The Elite Endurance Athlete at the 1997 American College of Sports Medicine meeting and the 1996 Pre-Olympic congress Australian Endurance Athletes:The Road to Atlanta. He has also been an invited speaker at Australian coaching conferences. He has taught courses in personal health and wellness, stress and stress management, exercise physiology and biochemistry, fitness and performance, pathology, and pharmacology.

Dr. Smith's main sporting activity for 15 years was as an equestrian where he won an Australian Championship at Restrictive Novice level in the One-Day Event. Since then, he has taken up skiing, distance running, and weight training. He worked as an assistant to Australian National Distance Running Coach, Dr. Dick Telford from 1994 to 1996 (coach of 1988 women's Olympic marathon silver medallist and 1992 New York marathon winner, Lisa Ondieki, among others).

Dr. Smith was instrumental in developing a cooling vest used by Australian endurance athletes at the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta. This resulted in him traveling with the Australian Olympic team to Atlanta where he was a consultant and carried out fitness testing. Dr. Smith's experience with over 1000 students from a variety of backgrounds and many athletes place him in a unique position to contribute to the education of health and fitness professionals.