Sidney C. Smith, Jr., M.D. is Professor of Medicine and Director of the Center for Cardiovascular Science and Medicine at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Dr Smith received his medical degree from Yale Medical School and completed his medical internship, residency, and cardiology fellowship at the Peter Bent Brigham  (now Brigham and Women’s) Hospital/Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA.

Dr. Smith is a past president of the American Heart Association (AHA) (1995-1996) and past member of the AHA Scientific Advisory Board and AHA Board of Directors. He served as the Chief Science Officer for the AHA from 2001 to 2003. He chaired the ACC/AHA guideline committee to revise PCI guidelines, served on the committee on guidelines for the management of acute myocardial infarction (STEMI), and chaired the AHA/ACC Guidelines on Secondary Prevention for patients with atherosclerotic vascular disease. He served as  Co-Chair of the 2004 ACC/AHA Bethesda Conference on Professionalism and Ethics. Dr. Smith currently chairs the ACC/AHA Task Force on Practice Guidelines and the Scientific Advisory Board of the World Heart Federation. He has recently been selected to serve as Chair of the Executive Committee for the new National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health’s Integrated Guidelines for the prevention of cardiovascular disease.

Dr. Smith has been elected to fellow status in a number of associations including the American Heart Association, American College of Physicians, American College of Cardiology, European Society of Cardiology, and Royal Society of Medicine. Among his many honors include the American Heart Association’s Physician of the Year Award (1993), Distinguished National Leadership Award (1996), Gold Heart Award (2001), and Eugene Drake Award (2003); and the NHLBI/NIH Award of Special Recognition (2003).

Dr. Smith has authored or co-authored more than 300 published papers and chapters and serves on the editorial boards for the Journal of Cardiovascular Medicine, Journal of Clinical and Experimental Cardiology, Journal of the American College of Cardiology and Circulation.