Kirk R. Smith was Professor of Global Environmental Health and Director of the Collaborative Clean Air Policy Centre, New Delhi. Previously, he was founder and head of the Energy Program of the East-West Center in Honolulu. He served on a number of national and international scientific advisory committees including the Global Energy Assessment, National Research Council’s Board on Atmospheric Science and Climate, the Executive Committee for WHO Air Quality Guidelines, the Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health, and the International Comparative Risk Assessment of the Global Burden of Disease Project. He has conducted field research on air pollution, both ambient and in households, in more than 20 countries of Asia and Latin America.  He has published about 400 articles in peer-reviewed journals and books on air pollution, climate change, energy, and development (recent are publications available here and through Pubmed.)

He participated, along with many other scientists, in the IPCC’s 3rd and 4th assessments for which he shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize and was Convening Lead Author for Climate and Health for the 5th Assessment. He held visiting professorships in India and China and bachelors, masters, and doctoral degrees from UC Berkeley and, in 1997, was elected member in the US National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest honors awarded to US Scientists by their peers. In 2009, he received the Heinz Prize in Environment and in 2012 was awarded the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement.

Professor Smith passed away at home in Berkeley, surrounded by family, after cardiac arrest following a stroke in June of 2020. His legacy is continued by the indelible imprint he left on his students, mentees, and on numerous colleagues, policymakers, and friends around the globe.

Research interests
Prof. Smith’s research focused on environmental and health issues in developing countries, particularly those related to health-damaging and climate-changing air pollution from household energy use, and included field measurement and health-effects studies in India, China, Nepal, Mongolia, Mexico, and Guatemala as well as development and application of tools for international policy assessments. He also developed and deployed small, smart, and cheap microchip-based monitors for use in these settings.

Achievements
Prof. Smith has demonstrated that the highest exposures to air pollutants occur in rural, indoor settings in developing countries where biomass and coal are the principal fuels. He has documented the associated risk for pneumonia and adverse birth outcomes in children and cataracts, tuberculosis, heart disease, and chronic lung disease in women as well as developed a range of small, smart, cheap microchip-based devices for field measurements. Since 40% of the world’s population uses these fuels, the total health impacts of this exposure are estimated to be larger than any other environmental risk factor He has also shown that renewable biomass fuel cycles are not greenhouse-gas neutral by conducting extensive measurements in India and China. He also created the concept of natural debt (net result of polluting our planet faster than natural processes can dissipate the damage) and applied it to international greenhouse-gas negotiations. This enables countries to negotiate how much responsibility each has for cleaning up the environment based upon relative contributions in the past and present. He pioneered the concept of exposure efficiency, now called “intake fraction” that simplifies exposure assessment. Finally, he created the concept of risk transition to complement traditional epidemiologic and demographic transitions models. He was author or co-author on several hundred publications.

Two NGOs run by former students have spun off from Prof. Smith’s research group: Impact Carbon, which develops improved stove programs for the international carbon market, and Berkeley Air Monitoring Group, which conducts independent monitoring and evaluation of household energy programs around the world.

Education
Ph.D. Biomedical and Environmental Health: Energy & Environment (1977), University of California Berkeley
M.P.H. Environmental Health Sciences (1972), University of California Berkeley
B.A. Physical Sciences: Physics and Astronomy (1968), University of California Berkeley

Selected Recent Activities
Convening Lead Author, Health Impacts Chapter, Global Energy Assessment, 2012
Co-Convening Lead Author, Health Impacts Chapter, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment (WGII), 2014
Chair of National Academies’ Research Council Committee on Exposure Science for the 21st Century, 2012
International Advisory Boards, Schools of Environmental Science and Engineering and Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University
Member, Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, NRC/NAS (2006-2012)
Global Comparative Risk Assessments (2004, 2012)– Ambient air pollution, household air pollution (chair), and secondhand tobacco smoke
Contributing Author, IPCC 4th Assessment, WGs II and III, 2007 (Extensively shared Nobel Peace Prize 2007)
Member, Core Groups, WHO Global Guidelines for Air Quality, 1996-
Chair, Combustion Particle Pollution, International Scientific Group on Methods for the Safety Evaluation of Chemicals
Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology, NRC/NAS (1998-2004)

Select Honors
2012: Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement
2012: 14th Distinguished Lecture, Qatar Foundation, Doha
2011: Visiting Distinguished Professor, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, China
2010: Visiting Distinguished Professor, Sri Ramachandra University, Chennai, India
2009: Heinz Award in Environment
2009: Lifetime Achievement Award, Mrigendra-Samjhana Medical Trust, Nepal
2009: Senator Frank R. Lautenberg Award, Rutgers University
2008: UCB Chancellor’s Award for Research in the Public Interest
2004: Honorary University Professor, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China
2003-07: Brian and Jennifer Maxwell Endowed Chair in Public Health
2000: Zaidi Oration, Industrial Toxicology Research Institute, India
1999: Wesolowski Award: International Society for Exposure Analysis/Science
1997: Elected Member, U.S. National Academy of Sciences
1997: Elected Member, International Academy of Indoor Air Sciences
1984: Elected by editors and scientific advisors of “Science Digest” as “One of America’s 100 Brightest Young Scientists

CURRICULUM VITAE
Professor Kirk Smith CV