Dr Lisa Smith

Career

Senior Lecturer (2024- present) School of Biosciences, University of Sheffield, UK.

Lecturer (2013-2023) Department of Animal and Plant Sciences/School of Biosciences, University of Sheffield, UK.

Max Planck Postdoctoral Fellow (2012-2013) Department of Molecular Biology, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Germany.

EMBO Postdoctoral Fellow (2010-2012) Department of Molecular Biology, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Germany.

Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow (2008-2010) Department of Molecular Biology, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Germany.

Max Planck Postdoctoral Fellow (2007-2008) Department of Molecular Biology, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Germany.

PhD student (2002-2006) The Sainsbury Laboratory (Norwich), UK.

BSc Hons (1998-2001) The University of Queensland, Australia.

Grants

BBSRC Responsive Mode Industrial Partnership Award (2023-2027) Exploring and exploiting epigenetic plant immunity (as CoI, Jurriaan Ton as PI, other CoIs Stephen Rolfe, Helen Hipperson, Karim Sorefan)

BBSRC Responsive Mode Grant (2022-2025) Signalling sex in plants: the role of peptide signals and the cell wall in fertilisation (as PI with Andrew Fleming as CoI, Sam Amsbury also collaborating)

Leverhulme Trust Research Project Grant  (2019-2024) A plant-specific motor during cell division and seed development (with Christian Voigt)

University of Sheffield Impact, Innovation, and Knowledge Exchange funding (2019-2020) Development of a novel plant breeding technology (with Jurriaan Ton and Stephen Rolfe)

Fellowships and Awards

Keystone Symposia scholarship from the National Science Foundation (Grant  #MCB-1158734, for the Nuclear Events in Plant Gene Expression and Signaling meeting, Taos NM, USA, 2012)

EMBO long-term postdoctoral fellowship 2010-2012 (awarded 2007)

Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship 2008-2010

University Medal for BSc(Hons) in 2001 (University of Queensland, Australia)

Research interests

Although research in the lab is focused on reproduction, signalling and cell division, I remain interested in other areas of plant development, signalling and genetics. Research into transposable elements and epigenetics continues through collaboration with the Ton group in Sheffield and the Johannes and Schneeberger groups in Germany. 

Equality and Diversity

I was a member of the Athena SWAN/Equality, Diversity and Inclusion committee in Animal and Plant Sciences from 2014-2021.

Professional services

Assistant Features Editor for Plant Physiology (2018-2019).

Reviewer for Nature Communications, PLoS Genetics, The Plant Cell, Molecular Plant Pathology, Scientific Reports, Plant Signaling and Behavior, Biochemie, Plant Biotechnology Journal, PLoS One, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, Plant Cell Reports, Tree Genetics and Genomics.

Grant reviews for BBSRC (UK), DFG (Germany), ANR (France) and OSF (Poland) proposals.