Rate My Professor Richard van Zyl-Smit

Professor Richard van Zyl-Smit is a Professor of Pulmonology and consultant pulmonologist at the University of Cape Town and Groote Schuur Hospital. He serves as Deputy Head of the Division of Pulmonology in the Department of Medicine and is a principal researcher at the UCT Lung Institute. He previously held the position of past president of the South African Thoracic Society. His academic background includes an MBChB from the University of Cape Town completed following enrolment in 1991, with internship at Groote Schuur Hospital in 1997. He obtained Membership of the Royal College of Physicians after working in London at University College London and Queen Mary’s Hospital. He completed medical registrar training and fellowship examinations in South Africa by 2003, followed by a PhD from the University of Cape Town in 2011 focused on the effects of tobacco smoke on pulmonary host defence mechanisms against mycobacterial infection. He was awarded a Discovery Foundation academic fellowship and an NIH Fogarty Fellowship to support his doctoral studies.