UAMS medical college dean named

Dr. Susan S. Smyth, a cardiologist and translational scientist who works at the University of Kentucky, will become executive vice chancellor and dean of the College of Medicine at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, effective June 1.

She succeeds Dr. Christopher T. Westfall, who is retiring Aug. 1 after a 24-year career at UAMS, the last three as College of Medicine dean.

Smyth, 55, is nationally known in the fields of cardiology and translational science, UAMS said.

Translational science is “the process of turning observations in the laboratory, clinic, and community into interventions that improve the health of individuals and populations – from diagnostics and therapeutics to medical procedures and behavioral interventions,” according to the National Institutes of Health National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences.

Smyth is chief of the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine and the director of the Gill Heart and Vascular Institute at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine. She is also senior associate director of the Kentucky Center for Clinical and Translational Science and has a part-time appointment as a physician and research investigator at the Lexington VA Health Care System.

At the Kentucky College of Medicine, she developed and carried out an operational structure that emphasized the integration and translation across research, education and clinical care, according to UAMS’ announcement about Smyth’s appointment.

Smyth earned a medical degree and a doctorate of pharmacology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She completed her internal medicine residency at the University Medical Center in Stony Brook, on the north shore of Long Island, N.Y., and cardiology fellowships at Mount Sinai Medical School in New York City and the University of North Carolina. She became a University of North Carolina faculty member in 2001.