vaginal microbiome Research
I completed my PhD in the in the Ravel lab at the University of Maryland / Institute for Genome Science (IGS) in Baltimore, MD, USA. where I identified host-microbial interactions in the human vaginal microbiome. I applied machine learning algorithms to prioritize miRNAs for further experimentation and identified a key host response in protection against a Chlamydia trachomatis infection:
Edwards VL, Smith SB, et al. 2019. The cervicovaginal microbiota host interaction modulates Chlamydia trachomatis infection. mBio 10:e01548-19. https://doi.org/10.1128/mBio.01548-19.
My work was also partially utilized in:
Delgado-Diaz, D.J, … Smith SB, et al. 2022. Lactic acid from vaginal microbiota enhances cervicovaginal epithelial barrier integrity by promoting tight junction protein expression. Microbiome. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40168-022-01337-5.
Jacques and I also published a review article in the Journal of Physiology:
Smith, S. B. and Ravel, J. (2017), The vaginal microbiota, host defence and reproductive physiology. J Physiol, 595: 451–463. doi:10.1113/JP271694
pan Respiratory Viral & bacterial projects
Along with collaborators at GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals and Drexel University, I computationally discovered common host responses across seven and two different respiratory viral and bacterial pathogens, respectively:
Smith SB, Dampier W, Tozeren A, Brown JR, Magid-Slav M (2012) Identification of Common Biological Pathways and Drug Targets Across Multiple Respiratory Viruses Based on Human Host Gene Expression Analysis PLoS ONE 7(3): e33174. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0033174
Smith SB, Magid-Slav M, Brown JR (2013) Host Response to Respiratory Bacterial Pathogens as Identified by Integrated Analysis of Human Gene Expression Data. PLoS ONE 8(9): e75607. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0075607
A Showcase of other projects
I have a myriad of other projects in which I designed experiments and applied computational methods:
Designed & Implemented MySQL databases to manage major projects.
Identifyed Novel miRNA in Arabidopsis Thaliana
Safety Assessment Study at AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals
Design & Implementation of a Brain-Computer Interface
Image Recognition using a Neural Network
Research Development Study at Lyophilization Technology, Incorporated