Jack W Smith, MD, PhD

Dr. Jack W. Smith was recruited from Ohio State University to become the first Chairman of the Department of Health Informatics at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.  He was instrumental in recruiting many of the original faculty from Ohio State University. In January 2003, he became the Interim Dean. In December 2005, Dr. Smith was appointed Dean of the School of Health Information Sciences at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.  He is a former team Leader of Medical Informatics and Healthcare Systems at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) - Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas.  His work focused on the collection, storage, retrieval, analysis, and transmission of medical information related to NASA spaceflight. 

Dr. Smith was appointed Director of the Bioinformatics component of the CTSA grant awarded to The University of Texas Health Science Center in 2006.  He joined a large team of medical professionals who have established the Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences in partnership with The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, MD Anderson Cancer Center, and the Memorial Hermann Hospital System.
Dr. Smith serves as an informatics consultant to other universities seeking application for a CTSA grant. 

His research interests include artificial intelligence, modeling complex problem-solving in healthcare, implementation of decision support and tutoring systems, and the application of cognitive science to understanding human-computer interaction. 

Dr. Smith is a board certified in Pathology and has a doctorate in Computer Science in the area of Artificial Intelligence.