Theodore R. Smith, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology
Director, Center for Healthy Air, Water and Soil

502-852-3993 • E-mail

Education and Training

Ph.D.: Miami University, Experimental Psychology
Postdoctoral Fellowship: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Research Interests

Eviromics, the study of the Envirome and it is relation to health outcomes, is an emerging field with deep roots in environmental health and toxicology. Like its cousin discipline of genomics, rapid evolution of sensor and data technologies help us "sequence" or characterize the envirome.

Our Center for Healthy Air Water and Soil within the Envirome Institute is focused on research that addresses the promotion of human health in urban environments. Many projects within the Institute share a focus on the biophilia hypothesis that suggests our fundamental affiliation with our broader ecology mediates disease risk. Several of these projects require sensor and data technologies, not only sensors for monitoring ambient particulate matter, noise pollution and air toxics, but also for measuring physical activity or personal biometric data. We plan to develop comprehensive and integrative approaches for acquiring environmental and individual-level data that could inform and enable new types of community-based observational or clinical studies.

Given this multidisciplinary approach, we will collaborate extensively with community, civil and business leadership. The experience gathered from such interactions will be useful in developing research translation abilities for communications with both community members and our federal partners within the Superfund program. Overall, to support the Envirome initiative and the development of the Center for Healthy, Air, Water, and Soil, the early focus is on scientific research in the areas of urban development and health and novel approaches for measuring and assessing different domains of the envirome (sensors, new data sources). A second area of focus  is the development of new models and frameworks for communicating scientific knowledge to the lay public, other academics, healthcare industry, policy makers and other stakeholders..

Featured Publications

Find all papers and citations via ResearchGate

  • Hassard F, Smith TR, Boehm AB, Nolan S, O'Mara O, Di Cesare M, Graham D. Wastewater surveillance for rapid identification of infectious diseases in prisons. Lancet Microbe. 2022 Jun 7:S2666-5247(22)00154-9. doi: 10.1016/S2666-5247(22)00154-9. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 35688168; PMCID: PMC9173719.
  • Wood, L. A., Tomlinson, M. M., Pfeiffer, J. A., Walker, K. L., Keith, R. J., Smith, T., ... & Hart, J. L. (2021). Time spent outdoors and sleep normality: A preliminary investigation. Population Medicine, 3(March), 1-6.
  • Kaplin, A., Junker, C., Kumar, A., Ribeiro, M. A., Yu, E., Wang, M., ... & Bhatnagar, A. (2021). Evidence and magnitude of the effects of meteorological changes on SARS-CoV-2 transmission. PloS one, 16(2), e0246167.
  • Smith, T., Cassell, G., & Bhatnagar, A. (2021, January). Wastewater surveillance can have a second act in COVID-19 vaccine distribution. In JAMA Health Forum (Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. e201616-e201616). American Medical Association.
  • Fuqua, J., Rouchka, E., Waigel, S., Sokoloski, K., Chung, D., Zacharias, W., ... & Bhatnagar, A. (2021). A rapid assessment of wastewater for genomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 variants at sewershed scale in Louisville, KY. medRxiv.
  • Fontenele, R. S., Kraberger, S., Hadfield, J., Driver, E. M., Bowes, D., Holland, L. A., ... & Varsani, A. (2021). High-throughput sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater provides insights into circulating variants. medRxiv.
  • Swaminathan, S., Morrill, J., Qirko, K., Smith, T., Wysham, N., & Toro, B. (2020). A Patient Feedback Driven, Stacked Machine-Learning Approach to At-Home COPD Triage.
  • Baba, S., Smith, T., Hellmann, J., Bhatnagar, A., Carter, K., Vanhoover, A., & Caruso, J. (2020). Space Flight Diet-Induced Deficiency and Response to Gravity-Free Resistive Exercise. Nutrients, 12(8), 2400.
  • Casey, J. A., Su, J. G., Henneman, L. R., Zigler, C., Neophytou, A. M., Catalano, R., ... & Barrett, M. A. (2020). Coal-fired power plant closures and retrofits reduce asthma morbidity in the local population. Nature Energy, 5(5), 365-366.
  • Casey, J. A., Su, J. G., Henneman, L. R., Zigler, C., Neophytou, A. M., Catalano, R., ... & Barrett, M. A. (2020). Improved asthma outcomes observed in the vicinity of coal power plant retirement, retrofit and conversion to natural gas. Nature energy, 5(5), 398-408.
  • Kaplin, A. I., Junker, C., Kumar, A., de Amorim Ribeiro, M. A., Yu, E., Wang, M., ... & Bhatnager, A. (2020). Evidence and magnitude of seasonality in SARS-CoV-2 transmission: Penny wise, pandemic foolish?. medRxiv.
  • Yeager, R. A., Holm, R. H., Saurabh, K., Fuqua, J. L., Talley, D., Bhatnagar, A., & Smith, T. R. (2020). Wastewater sample site selection to estimate geographically-resolved community prevalence of COVID-19: A research protocol. medRxiv.
  • Kumar, A., Wang, M., Riehm, A., Yu, E., Smith, T., & Kaplin, A. (2020). An Automated Mobile Mood Tracking Technology (Mood 24/7): Validation Study. JMIR Mental Health, 7(5), e16237.
  • Swaminathan, S., Gerber, A., Qirko, K., Wysham, N., Corcoran, E., & Smith, T. (2019). A digital therapy for proactively managing exacerbations and delivering therapeutic benefit to patients with moderate to severe asthma.
  • Swaminathan, S., Qirko, K., Wysham, N., Corcoran, E., Smith, T., & Gerber, A. N. (2019). A Therapeutic Machine-Learned Triage Methodology for Moderate to Severe Asthmatics. Available at SSRN 3327368.
  • Smith TR, Mattingly TJ, Slabaugh L. Improving health determinants outside of the clinic does not mean outside of clinical science. Healthc (Amst). 2019 Jun 27. pii: S2213-0764(19)30148-4. doi: 10.1016/j.hjdsi.2019.06.001.
  • Yeager RA, Smith TR, Bhatnagar A. Green environments and cardiovascular health. Trends Cardiovasc Med. 2020 May;30(4):241-246. doi: 10.1016/j.tcm.2019.06.005. Epub 2019 Jun 18. PMID: 31248691; PMCID: PMC7995555.
  • Smith TR, Bhatnagar A. Enviromics: understanding aging. Aging (Albany NY). 2018 Dec 14;11(1):9-10. doi: 10.18632/aging.101709. PMID: 30552309; PMCID: PMC6339787.
  • Swaminathan S, Qirko K, Smith T, Corcoran E, Wysham NG, Bazaz G, Kappel G, Gerber AN. A machine learning approach to triaging patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. PLoS One. 2017 Nov 22;12(11):e0188532. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0188532. eCollection 2017. PubMed PMID: 29166411; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC5699810.
  • Su JG, Barrett MA, Henderson K, Humblet O, Smith T, Sublett JW, Nesbitt L, Hogg C, Van Sickle D, Sublett JL. Feasibility of Deploying Inhaler Sensors to Identify the Impacts of Environmental Triggers and Built Environment Factors on Asthma Short-Acting Bronchodilator Use. Environ Health Perspect. 2017 Feb;125(2):254-261. doi: 10.1289/EHP266. Epub 2016 Jun 24. PubMed PMID: 27340894; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC5289907.
  • Wall C 3rd, Smith TR, Furman JM. Plasticity of the human otolith-ocular reflex. Acta Otolaryngol. 1992;112(3):413-20. PubMed PMID: 1441982.