Faculty and Staff

HELEN SMITH
Assistant Professor, Pharmaceutical Sciences
hesmith@uiwtx.edu

Dr. Smith is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the Feik School of Pharmacy (FSOP). Dr. Smith teaches in the FSOP introductory pharmacology, renal, and oncology Pharmacotherapeutic courses as well as offering general toxicology and clinical toxicology electives. She has a special interest in the development of toxicology and pharmacogenomics curriculum appropriate for pharmacy students, and providing them with opportunities to conduct translational research in those topic areas.

Dr. Smith serves on the FSOP Admissions Committee, the Assessment Committee, and the Continuing Education Committee, as well as being the FSOP representative to the UIW Internal Review Board and sitting on the UIW Sustainability Committee. She also serves as Faculty Advisor to Phi Delta Chi and NCPA. While she has been at FSOP, she has assisted in the development of the San Antonio MedDropSA medication disposal project, published a paper in the journal Pharmacogenetics and Genomics, presented to the local chapter of the American Chemical Society, authored a chapter in the text “Concepts in Pharmacogenomics” and taken part in a panel discussion session entitled “End of Drug Lifecycle: What happens once ADME is completed?” She has been awarded the UIW Faculty Development Endowment Research Fund (2010) as well as received an invitation to attend the UIW Faculty Development Grant Writing Summer Workshop (2010).

Dr. Smith completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Pharmaceutics in the University of Washington, Seattle, WA where she conducted pharmacogenetic clinical studies. While a post-doc, she was a co-instructor for a graduate level Journal Club course on the topic of Defining sensitive populations-Lessons learned with Pharmacogenomics. She also co-authored several publications, including an article in the Journal of Clinical Pharmacology (2005), a case in the Textbook of Therapeutics: Drug and Disease Management (2006), co-authorship in Appendix II: Design and Optimization of Dosage Regiments: Pharmacokinetic Data in Goodman & Gilman’s the Pharmacological basis of Therapeutics (2006), and Chapter 8: Polymorphisms in Xenobiotic Conjugation in Gene-Environment Interactions: Fundamentals of Ecogenetics (2005.) Results from one of her projects were presented at the 14th North American International Society for the Study of Xenobiotics, Rio Grande, Puerto Rico.

Prior to her postdoc, Dr. Smith earned a Doctor of Philosophy in Toxicology from the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, School of Public Health and Community Medicine at the University of Washington, Seattle in 2004. She also completed the Certificate Program in Public Health Genetics in the Context of Law, Ethics, and Policy issued by the Institute for Public Health Genetics at the University of Washington. During her studies she was an NIEHS Environmental Pathology and Toxicology Training Grant Recipient. She presented findings from her doctoral research at national meetings including the Gordon Research Conference, Hormonal Carcinogenesis Section (2001), the Society of Toxicology Annual Meeting (2001), the Joint Meeting of the 38th Hanford Symposium on Health and the Environment & the 17th Annual Meeting of the Pacific Northwest Association of Toxicologists (2000), and the Gordon Research Conference, Mechanisms of Toxicity Section (2000). During her doctoral training she was a teaching assistant for several courses in the Department of Environmental Health, and was a member of the Department’s Graduate Admissions Committee and the Curriculum Committee. While earning her doctorate and during her post-doc, Dr. Smith held a clinical pharmacist position at the University of Washington Medical Center where she practiced pharmacy in the Outpatient Pharmacy.

Before living in Seattle, Dr. Smith earned an MS in toxicology MS in Environmental Sciences from the Department of Environmental Health, School of Public Health, University of Texas Health Science Center Houston. After earning that degree, she worked as a toxicologist in the Toxicology and Risk Assessment Section for the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission in Austin Texas and in the Risk Assessment Group for Radian International, LLC, in Austin. While earning her MS, she worked as a clinical pharmacist in the Department of Pharmacoeconomics, Division of Pharmacy at The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

Dr. Smith started her career as a Pharmacist and Assistant Store Manager for Med-X Corporation in Tulsa Oklahoma and as a staff pharmacist at St. Francis Hospital, also in Tulsa Oklahoma after earning a BS in Pharmacy from the University of Texas at Austin.