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.

Professor van Zyl-Smit’s research specializations centre on airways diseases including asthma and COPD, with emphasis on tobacco use, household air pollution, electronic cigarettes, and their effects on pulmonary immune responses to infections such as pneumococcal and mycobacterial pathogens, particularly in low-income settings. He has authored more than 90 academic publications and co-authored the article “Global lung health: the colliding epidemics of tuberculosis, tobacco smoking, HIV and COPD.” He has also written two books reflecting on mental health, burnout, and sustainability in academia and medicine: They Don’t Award Nobel Prizes to Dead People and Thoughts on a Saturday Morning. In his career, he led the Lung Clinical Research Unit from 2013 to 2021, established the first formal smoking cessation clinic at Groote Schuur Hospital, and delivered his Vice-Chancellor’s Inaugural Lecture in 2022 titled “Where there is smoke there is fire: Facing the giants of tobacco, industry and academia without getting burnt.”