Organization
The New School
Davida Smyth
Profile
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Employment StatusUniversity / 4-year College Faculty - Tenure-track
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ORCID0000-0002-4049-0337
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ReasonLearning about subject matter
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Address
address1: 80 5th Ave, Room 518 city: New York postal: 10011 region: NY country: US
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Biography
Very Irish, Microbe lover, Researcher, Educator
More about me:
Davida S. Smyth, holds a Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Dublin, Trinity College, Ireland and completed her postdoctoral training at New York Medical College, the University of Mississippi Medical Center, and New York University. She currently serves as Associate Professor in the Department of Natural Sciences in Mercy College’s School of Health and Natural Sciences, where she teaches environmental science, introductory biology, microbiology, environmental science and genetics. She holds Assistant Research Scientist status in the lab of Professor Richard Novick at NYU Langone Medical Center and is an Adjunct Lecturer for the online Masters in Bioinformatics program at NYU Tandon School of Engineering. Prior to joining Mercy, Dr. Smyth was an adjunct instructor at Stern College of Yeshiva University and Assistant Professor of Biology at New York City College of Technology (NYCCT). At NYCCT, she coordinated the microbiology course, established and ran the internship course for biomedical informatics, and acted as program coordinator for biomedical informatics (in 2015). Dr. Smyth has published extensively in the field of microbial epidemiology and has more than 20 original articles in peer-reviewed journals, and a book chapter. She is a member of the editorial board of BMC Infectious Diseases journal. She was also the co-coordinator of READ—an initiative aimed at improving biology students’ reading skills through instruction in reading, faculty development, and peer led team learning developed at New York City College of Technology by Project Director, Prof Juanita But. As part of the NYCCT team, READ has been the recipient of two SENCER Summer Institute post implementation awards and was part of CUNY Service Corps as a faculty-led project by Dr Smyth. She is devoted to undergraduate research. Since 2012, she has established new research projects in microbial ecology with her undergraduate student researchers. She studies the microbiome of the college campus and organism diversity of water sites in Brooklyn. Her students have presented their work at Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students (ABRCMS), and the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) annual conference. She has served as a judge for ABRCMS and reviewed student proposals for SACNAS. Committed to integrating research and teaching, at Mercy, she has developed a classroom undergraduate research experience called "The Microbiology of Urban Spaces". Most recently, she was awarded a grant from the Department of Defence to establish the Initiative for Undergraduate Research and Education in Genomics and to purchase an Ion S5 DNA sequencer.