Professor Smith is Chair of Psychiatry and Head of the Division of Psychiatry within the Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences. He also works as an Honorary Consualtant Psychiatrist in NHS Lothian and is Convenor for Undergraduate Psychiatry witin Edinburgh Medical School.

He trained in medicine at the University of Edinburgh (BSc, 1994 and MB ChB, 1996) and completed a clinical research training fellowship in Edinburgh (MD, 2006) alongside an International Masters in Affective Neuroscience in Maastricht (MSc, 2006). After clinical training Prfoessor Smith held a postdoctoral fellowship from the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) at Cardiff University (2006-2012). He moved to the University of Glasgow as Reader in Psychiatry in 2012 and was promoted to a personal chair in 2014. He joined the University of Edinburgh in April 2021.

Professor Smith's work has been recognised by a number of awards and fellowships, including the American Psychiatric Institute ‘Young Minds in Psychiatry’ International Award for Bipolar Disorder (2007), the Association of European Psychiatrists Research Prize (2007), an NIHR Postdoctoral Fellowship (2008-2011), an Independent Investigator Award from the Brain and Behaviour Research Foundation (2014), the British Medical Journal Innovation Team Award (2014), and a Lister Institute Prize Fellowship (2016).

BSc, MB ChB, MSc, MD, FRCPsych.

Professor Smith's research interests are in four main areas:

• The genetic epidemiology of mood disorders (particularly bipolar disorder)
• Data science and mental health informatics research
• Understanding comorbidity between mental and physical health disorders
• Sleep and circadian health as they relate to mood disorders

His group has been at the forefront of mental health research using data from the UK Biobank cohort and he is part of several global research collaborations, including the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, the Consortium for Lithium Genomics and the Chronobiology Task Force of the International Society for Bipolar Disorder. 

Mental Health Research Using UK Biobank Data

Schools-based Mental Health Research

Professor Daniel Smith on BBC World News - Bipolar Disorder

Sleep, Circadian Rhythms and Mental Health

BBC Scotland River City: Discussion on Bipolar Disorder Storyline