Janet L. Smith
Janet Smith is Rita Willis Professor of the Life Sciences and Martha L. Ludwig Distinguished University Professor of Biological Chemistry at University of Michigan. Her research focuses on understanding biological processes through knowledge of the structures of key protein molecules. Early in her independent career, she made major contributions to the understanding of catalysis and regulation in glutamine amidotransferases, phosphoribosyltransferases and photosynthetic proteins by solving and interpreting crystal structures of several proteins of each type. She has also contributed to the development of methods for rapid determination of protein crystal structures, particularly using synchrotron X-ray sources.
Smith holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin. She was a National Research Council postdoctoral fellow in protein crystallography at the Naval Research Laboratory, an Associate Research Scientist at Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Columbia University, and previously taught at Purdue University. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Crystallographic Association, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.