Ames Laboratory
Emily Smith is the Division Director for Chemical and Biological Sciences at Ames National Laboratory and a Professor of Chemistry at Iowa State University.
She is an optical spectroscopist focusing on measurements that are traditionally inaccessible to light-based measurements. Her research interests are spectroscopy instrument development for the analysis of nanoscale phenomena in separations materials, plant and animal tissue; and understanding the molecular events that lead to the organization of the cell membrane.
She received a Bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University and graduate degrees in chemistry from Pennsylvania State University (M.S.) and University of Wisconsin-Madison (Ph.D.). Her postdoctoral appointments were at University of Delaware and she was a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Arizona and the Arizona Cancer Center. She was a 2019-2021 American Association for the Advancement of Science, Science and Technology Policy Fellow working at the Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences.
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Ames Laboratory
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Research teams in the Division of Chemical and Biological Sciences conduct fundamental and applied studies of how to control and manipulate chemicals and biological materials. We work to develop new catalysts that enable more efficient chemical reactions, discover new ways to convert plants to biofuels, understand how solvents affect chemical reactions, and how molecules diffuse on surfaces and through tiny pores. Developing new instruments is also at the heart of our research. Understanding Nature's fundamental building blocks requires us to be able to see things at tiny length scales and fast time scales. We are at the cutting edge of developing tools and methods for understanding what drives biological and chemical processes; we are leaders in the fields of mass spectrometric imaging, solid state NMR, Raman spectroscopy, and single particle analysis. Basic research conducted within the CBS is performed primarily through funding provided by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Basic Energy Sciences. (insert any additional external program funding sources)