Dr. Smith is the scientific director of the synthetic genomics and biological energy groups at the J. Craig Venter Institute. He received the 1978 Nobel Prize for his work on the discovery of restriction enzymes, which are one of the primary tools used in the field of recombinant DNA technology. Dr. Smith is widely considered one of the experts in DNA library construction and DNA manipulation techniques. He was formerly the senior director of DNA Resources at Celera Genomics. Prior to joining Celera, Dr. Smith joined the scientific team at The Institute for Genomic Research, a position he held after leaving the Johns Hopkins University where he was professor of molecular biology and genetics. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.