Cindy J Smith

Cindy Smith is a British engineer who is a professor of environmental microbiology at the James Watt School of Engineering at the University of Glasgow. Her research looks to develop low cost, sustainable drinking water for rural communities. She was appointed the Royal Academy of Engineering Scottish Water Research Chair on Biofiltration by Biological Design.

Early life and education Smith studied environmental biology at University College Dublin. She remained there for her doctoral research, where she investigated the bacterial communities associated with marine fish, and developed a biological tag. She was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Exeter and University of Sheffield, where she studied the molecular ecology of the nitrogen cycle. In 2010. she joined the National University of Ireland as a University Fellow. where she studied molecular microbial ecology in coastal bay sediments. Smith develops new strategies to bring low-cost, sustainable drinking water to rural communities. Water treatment in areas of low population density has high economic and environmental costs, whilst urban communities have centralised water treatment provision. Water treatment for rural communities of one hundred homes are equivalent to services provided for ten thousand. Smith develops low-cost, decentralised filtration technologies (e.g. slow san filtration). She studies the microbial community structures involved in "natural" biogeochemical water treatments.

In 2018, Smith was made a Royal Academy of Engineering Scottish Water Research Chair.

Selected publications