Chris Smith, The Naked Scientist

Dr Chris Smith - "the Naked Scientist" - is a medical doctor and a clinical lecturer in virology at Cambridge University. He is also a science radio broadcaster and writer, and presents the Naked Scientists on the BBC, a programme which he founded in 2001.

In addition to the Naked Scientists, he appears each Monday morning on BBC Radio Five Live's Up All Night programme, and live every Friday morning on Australia's ABC Radio National Breakfast show, with an update of the week's science news. He is also a frequent contributor to Robyn Williams' "The Science Show" on the same station, and also appears on Johannesburg-based South African station TalkRadio 702 for thirty minutes every Friday morning with a half hour science news round up and listener phone-in.

He is also the founder and producer and presenter of the first 100 episodes of "The Nature Podcast", which he launched after approaching the journal Nature with the idea of a journal-based podcast in 2005. The resulting show was the first example of an international science journal producing an audio programme to supplement its printed content. Smith left in late 2007 after achieving a century of episodes at the helm.

Naked Scientists Podcast

The Naked Scientists is now one of the world's most downloaded science podcasts. It was also the first example of a BBC local and regional programme to be published as a podcast, and within its first twelve months received 2 million programme downloads. As of March 2008 the number of downloaded programme episodes exceeds 5 million internationally.

Books

He recently published [http://www.thenakedscientists.com/book Naked Science] , his first book, which is an anthology of science stories based on the material presented on The Naked Scientists over the last three years. In the pipeline, and due out in September, are several new titles with publishers in the UK and Australia.

Awards

His work on the Naked Scientists also won Chris the [http://www.bsf.ac.uk/default.htm Bioscience Federation] Prize for Science Communication, 2006, the JOSH Award for science communication, 2007, and the Peter Wildy Prize for Science Communication 2008 from the Society for General Microbiology.

External links

* [http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/background/chrisCV.htm Chris Smith Biog]
* [http://www.thenakedscientists.com/naked_scientists_podcast.xml The Naked Scientists Podcast]
* [http://www.thenakedscientists.com/ The Naked Scientists Website]
* [http://www.abc.net.au/rn/breakfast/about/ Radio National Breakfast]