Maia Smith

Maia P Smith earned an interdisciplinary bachelor's degree from the College of the Atlantic (2006); a master's degree in biostatistics from Drexel University (2013) and a doctorate in human biology from the Ludwig Maximilians University (2017.)   Currently she is an assistant professor at St. George's University School of Medicine, where she teaches biostatistics, epidemiology and research methods.

Maia's work focuses on behavioral epidemiology.  She uses scalable measures to assess behaviors and clinical outcomes in real-world settings in order to draw causal inferences.   Her past projects include:

• connecting accelerometric physical-activity data to clinically-measured respiratory function: no association;
• connecting indicators of muscle strength to respiratory function in the same population: a strong association;
• replicating the above work in different populations;
• using activity diaries in conjunction with accelerometry to distinguish the effects of active lifestyle (e.g. sport participation) from those of physical activity.

Current projects include:

• using NHANES data to investigate the associations between aerobic exercise, strength training, and cardiovascular measures;
• collecting physical-activity data with different devices simultaneously and comparing the accuracy of the devices, in collaborations with the University of Tromso and Harvard University.

She is interested in collaborating on any project which investigates the associations between health choices and health outcomes, and can be reached at maia.phillips.smith@gmail.com.