Brian K. Smith


Brian K. Smith is Senior Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Professor in the at Drexel University. He also has an appointment in the learning technologies program. In 2017-18, he was on rotation as a program officer at the National Science Foundation in the .

Academic History

Before joining Drexel, Smith was the Dean of Rhode Island School of Design's Continuing Education division from 2010-13. At RISD, Smith was involved in , an initiative to strengthen ties between art/design and science/engineering disciplines. He is also a founding member of , the Network for Science, Engineering, Art, and Design, a group funded by the National Science Foundation to facilitate interdisciplinary collaborations between the arts and sciences.
Smith was an associate professor of Information Sciences and Technology and Education at Pennsylvania State University. He was the principal investigator for the Medical Informatics Research Initiative and Director of the Solutions Institute.
Smith has received recognition from a number of different areas, including but not limited to the from the National Science Foundation in 2000. He has also had an appearance on the cover of in February 2002, and received the Jan Hawkins Award for early career contributions to Humanistic Research and Scholarship in Learning Technologies from the American Education Research Association.
Smith was an assistant & associate professor of Media Arts and Sciences in the MIT Media Laboratory from 1997-2002, where he conducted research on software for use in education, particularly software incorporating multimedia with an emphasis on visual features and design. His research during this time covered different aspects of education, including but not limited to Music, Biology, and History. His research during this time also included concerns outside of the classroom, with publications in the medical field examining the potential benefits of a multimedia approach to patient counseling and education.
While at the Pennsylvania State University, Smith continued to conduct educational multimedia software research, branching out into studies of physically active computer gaming and Fantasy basketball. He was also a member of the panel that produced the National Research Council report, Learning Science in Informal Environments: People, Places, and Pursuits.

Educational Background

Smith received his Ph.D in Learning Sciences from Northwestern University, and his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Engineering at UCLA.

Selected publications