Adam E. Smith

Adam Smith is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, MS. He received a B.S. and M.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Mississippi and a Ph.D. in Polymer Science and Engineering from the University of Southern Mississippi.

During Dr. Smith’s training he developed a focus on utilizing controlled radical polymerization techniques to synthesize block copolymers for applications in drug and gene delivery. During his doctoral studies in Charles McCormick’s lab at the University of Southern Mississippi he utilized reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization for the synthesis of functional block copolymers and studied their stimuli-responsive self-assembly and shell cross-linking for drug delivery applications. His postdoctoral studies at Virginia Tech focused on the development of block copolymers gene delivery vehicles using RAFT polymerization. In the groups of Theresa Reineke and Timothy Long, he synthesized novel carbohydrate- and phosphonium-based diblock copolymers to form colloidally stable pDNA and siRNA delivery vehicles.