Dr. Jill P. Smith is a clinician scientist and professor of medicine at Georgetown University and a member of the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center. She also is a staff physician in gastroenterology and hepatology at the DC Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

Her passion has always been bench-to-bedside, or translational, research. She was recruited to Georgetown University from the National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, to establish a translational research program in gastrointestinal cancer.

Her basic science research for over two decades has focused on cholecystokinin receptors and other G-protein coupled receptors, which are proteins that sit on the surface of a cell and transmit signals from outside to inside the cell. Her research focuses on pancreatic cancer and hepatocellular carcinoma in understanding the mechanisms involved with carcinogenesis (what makes cancer form) and developing novel strategies for therapy or cancer prevention.