Dr. Martin Smith

Biography

Associate Professor Martin Smith is a computational biologist specializing in transcriptomics and RNA biology, with a focus on the development of genomic technologies and their clinical applications. As the Director of the Ramaciotti Centre for Genomics, he is committed to providing high-quality genomic services as part of Australia’s national research infrastructure, which supports scientific excellence with real-world impact. His research investigates the functional characterization of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) using integrated biological and computational approaches. He has a particular interest in the structure-function relationships of RNA, RNA modifications, and the regulatory architecture of mammalian genomes. His group also develops and applies nanopore single-cell sequencing platforms to explore RNA biology in relation to immunology, cancer, and neuroscience. Martin has a robust academic background in biological sciences, having majored in microbiology and immunology at Université de Montréal, where he also completed a Master’s degree in bioinformatics specializing in genomics of parasitic protists. He completed his PhD in genomics and computational biology at the University of Queensland, focusing on the evolutionary signatures of molecular function conservation in RNA structures. He has had significant contributions at the Garvan Institute for Medical Research, where he developed computational solutions for analyzing human transcriptomic data, and he has founded commercial nanopore sequencing platforms.

Research Interests