Experimental Medicine: arriving at the BOOST theory

In her inaugural lecture, Prof Carine Smith reflects on her personal road to full professorship – and a little beyond. She shares highlights from her career as a researcher of regulatory system maladaptation in the context of chronic stress and inflammatory disease, knowing that promotion to full professor is first and foremost premised on a record of exemplary academic achievement.

This ‘clinical’ approach of evaluating academics by quantifiable measures such as awards, publications, student supervision and scientific metrics is necessary to ensure accountability in academia. Yet it largely overlooks the uniqueness of each individual career in science, with relative neglect of the human factor. Therefore, as an experienced academic mentor and advocate for human capacity-building and sustainability in research, Prof Smith also describes the unique situations, decisions and individual role players that have collectively shaped her career trajectory.

Finally, she gives her take on the requirements for a successful – and impactful – career in academia through the formulation of the BOOST theory.

WATCH THE INAUGURAL LECTURE HERE

Short biography

Carine Smith is a professor of Medicine in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at Stellenbosch University (SU), having obtained her PhD in Physiological Sciences from the same institution. She is also a medical technologist registered with the South African Health Professions Council, as well as a para-veterinarian authorised by the South African Veterinary Council.

As chair of Experimental Medicine in SU’s Department of Medicine, her Disease Modelling and Drug Discovery research group studies the role of regulatory system maladaptation in chronic inflammatory conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, autism spectrum disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder. Among others, they use various research models – from cellular to zebrafish, rodent and human – to perform disease modelling aimed at therapeutic target identification, drug discovery, and drug delivery and efficacy testing. Their research highlights include having conducted the first official South African clinical trial on a preventative ethnomedicine in the context of chronic inflammatory disease. Prof Smith is also the vice-chair of SU’s Research Ethics Committee for Animal Care and Use.

Boasting a National Research Foundation rating, she has published 98 peer-reviewed scientific papers and two book chapters, and has registered an international patent. To date, she has supervised 17 PhD and 49 MSc students through to graduation and hosted nine postdoctoral fellows.

Further afield, Prof Smith serves as an academic advisor to several partners in the pharmaceutical industry, belongs to a number of international academic societies, and has presented plenary and keynote lectures in both the United States and Europe. She is the associate editor of the Q1-ranked journal Inflammopharmacology and an editorial board member of Frontiers in Pharmacology, the most cited open-access journal in Pharmacology. She is also an elected board member of the international Zebrafish Disease Models Society (ZDMS).

Her passion for contributing to research sustainability in Africa led her to establish the SU zebrafish husbandry and research facility, which she now directs. Most recently, she also helped set up the Zebrafish African Network (ZeFAN), through which she hopes to build capacity for zebrafish-based research on the continent. Prof Smith has an established track record of bringing together and leading multidisciplinary research groups, and several of the young academics she has mentored over the past 15 years now hold leading positions in either academia or industry.