Alison Gail Smith

Alison Gail Smith, Lady Hopper is Professor of Plant Biochemistry in the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Cambridge, UK.

Education Smith was educated at the University of Bristol where she was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in biochemistry in 1977. She moved to the University of Cambridge, to do a Ph.D. investigating the role of a toxin produced by the bacterium Pseudomonas syringae in causing the symptoms of halo blight of green beans, which she completed in 1981.

Research and career Smith's research investigates the:

Research in Smith's group is also investigating the potential for exploitation of algae for carbon capture and storage, algae fuel and algaculture. Her research has been funded by the European Union, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the Economic and Social Research Council and the Natural Environment Research Council.

She is a council member of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom of the United Kingdom and as a member of the board of the National Institute of Agricultural Botany. In 2009, she was awarded an Erskine Fellowship from the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, and she became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology (FRSB) in 2012.

Smith was interviewed by Jim Al-Khalili on The Life Scientific, first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2017.

Personal life Smith is married to computer scientist Andy Hopper (Sir Andrew Hopper), with whom she has two children.