Professor Alice Smith

Professor Alice Smith

Head of the Leicester Kidney Lifestyle Team

Professor Smith leads the Leicester Kidney Lifestyle team, she has been working in kidney research in Leicester since 1989. For the first 15 years of her career, Professor Smith was in the laboratory investigating the causes of IgA Nephropathy, a type of kidney disease. In 2001, she became interested in researching exercise for health and enjoyed working directly with patients to improve their health and wellbeing. This inspired the establishment of the Kidney Lifestyle team, which has grown to include about 20 multidisciplinary researchers. Over the past 12 years we have run more than 20 single- and multi-centre clinical studies and trials, and recruited over 12,000 participants at research sites all over England. We network, collaborate with and host international colleagues, especially from Portugal, Brazil, China, the USA and Canada. We have published nearly 200 research papers, delivered 300 conference presentations and supervised 35 research degrees including 18 PhDs.