Janet Smith holds a BS degree in Chemistry from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin where she studied with M. Sundaralingam. After a postdoctoral fellowship with Wayne Hendrickson at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC and at Columbia University in New York City, she established an independent research group at Purdue University. In 2005, she was recruited to the Life Sciences Institute and Department of Biological Chemistry at the University of Michigan where she has been Martha L. Ludwig Professor of Protein Structure and Function. Her research program is focused on the structure and function of complex enzymes, including polyketide synthases, and also on replication proteins of flaviviruses. She is a founder and currently the Scientific Director of the GM/CA@APS project, which operates two beamlines specializing in microcrystallography at the Advanced Photon Source.