Douglas H. Smith, M.D.
Dr. Smith serves as Director of the Center for Brain Injury and Repair (CBIR) and is a Professor of Neurosurgery at the University of Pennsylvania. Penn’s multidisciplined CBIR includes over twenty principal investigators and their laboratory staff collectively studying mechanisms, diagnosis and potential treatments of traumatic brain injury. Dr. Smith has recently served as Vice President of the National Neurotrauma Society (2003-2004), and now serves as a Councilor (2006-2009). He has also been a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Neurotrauma since 1995. Following completion of fellowships in both molecular biology and neurotrauma at the University of Connecticut, Dr. Smith’s research focus has been on one of the most important pathologies associated with traumatic brain injury; diffuse axonal injury. In particular, his laboratory examines the effects of mechanical deformation of axons during trauma, imaging techniques to diagnose diffuse axonal injury, and the link between diffuse axonal injury and neurodegenerative diseases. In addition, his laboratory has recently begun studying spinal cord injury by evaluating novel tissue engineering approaches to repair spinal cord damage. These efforts have resulted in well over 100 published reports.