Adam Smith, chief scientific officer of Nobel Prize Outreach AB, has a background in scientific research and science publishing. He studied chemistry at Oxford, before moving to the pharmacology department to pursue doctoral research combining medicinal chemistry and neuroscience. He took postdoctoral fellowships in Oxford to learn neurophysiology, and in Heidelberg to learn molecular biology. Smith then returned to Oxford to run his own Wellcome Trust-funded lab for four years, investigating the role of neurotransmitters in brain development.

Smith took over as chief editor of trends in pharmacological sciences in June 2000, and then moved to Nature Publishing Group in 2001 as editor-in-chief of a new title, Nature Reviews Drugs Discovery, which launched in 2002 to become the highest cited review journal in its field. The journal reflects his belief in the importance of collaborative, interdisciplinary approaches to drug development.

Smith then moved to publishing positions, first within Nature Publishing Group as publisher for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology portfolios, and then at Informa Healthcare, where he was journals publishing director. In June 2006, Smith took on the newly created role of editor-in-chief at Nobelprize.org, the official website of the Nobel Foundation. In 2010 Nobelprize.org became part of Nobel Prize Outreach AB, the Nobel Foundation’s company covering the areas of digital and broadcast media, publishing and events.