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2025 International Day of Women and Girls in Science

Associate Professor Rona Smith

Picture of Rona Smith with a background of trees and blue sky.

Could you explain what your job title is?


I have got two job titles; I’m an associate professor in nephrology, which is kidney medicine, and also a consultant in nephrology and vasculitis, meaning I look after patients will conditions that affect their kidneys or cause inflammation to blood vessels. 

 I spend half my time doing clinical work, on the wards and in clinics, seeing patients with kidney diseases and vasculitis and the other half doing clinical research. I don’t have a lab, but I am still a scientist.  I focus on designing trials to test new medicines and approaches to management of patients to try to improve their outcomes.

What you do on a day-to-day basis?


Mondays and Fridays are my clinical days, where I see patients in clinic.   I also attend a series of team meetings, to discuss complex cases and their management. The other clinical bit I do, for seven or eight weeks a year, is to be the consultant on the ward, meaning I’m responsible for a ward of patients, their day-to-day care, investigations and management, along with supporting the team of the junior doctors and other staff: nurses, physios, dietitians. 

The other part of my job, which I try to fit in to Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, is my research. I currently have three trials running, which are at various different stages. Clinical trials often run for a long time and take years to complete. One of my trials has reached the end stages, so we are cleaning and analysing the data. The other two trials are ongoing, which means there’s day-to-day management, dealing with issues that crop up and communicating across the 50 UK sites – to keep them motivated to continue recruiting patients. I also write reports for our funders and safety committees. I also work on developing new research ideas that aren’t yet fully funded, putting in grant applications and designing new studies.

A strong motivating factor, which weaves through all my work, is problem solving. I find I spend a lot of my time thinking about and solving problems…if I’m on the ward with a sick patient and am not sure what is wrong with them, I have got to piece together all the bits of information I have, in order to solve the question mark over their diagnosis. It’s like deciphering a puzzle. With my research, problems frequently arise and I need to consider how I’m going to get round them or fix them. Problem solving features daily in all aspects of my work.

The mixed workload I have, is really great, it’s not boring at all! Every day is different, even if it involves a really complex level of problem solving and multitasking!

What is the highlight of your job?

I think probably the highlight is when my research directly translates into clinical practice. For example, if I have a patient in front of me and I need to make a treatment decision and the evidence for that decision is actually based on a trial that either I’ve run, or been part of, by collaborating with individuals in industry or academics around the country. In situations like this, I can sit back and reflect on that fact that I took part in generating that knowledge and I am now applying it to help this person in front of me and make a real difference. 
I think that gives me the biggest satisfaction and is actually pretty amazing. 

Could you outline how you got into this career?


I knew from the age of about 13 or 14, that I wanted to be a doctor and that was because I enjoyed science and the idea of working with people. 
So, I progressed through school to university and qualified as a doctor. Once qualified, I assumed I was going to be a full-time clinician, research hadn’t even really crossed my mind and didn’t know you could do research and be clinician at the same time. I knew I didn’t want to go and work in a lab -or be a surgeon -
I often know what I don’t want to do before I know what I do want – which was be a medical doctor.

Whilst working as a junior doctor on the wards, I maintained an open mind, which I think is a key when working in a junior position.  I did a rotation on the kidney ward and thought, ‘this is what I want to do.’ 
I was surrounded by people that had real enthusiasm, were making a difference to people’s lives and were always questioning why we were doing things.

I then began to think about doing research, because I had observed people doing clinical trials and I liked the idea of that. I went and talked to various people and asked about possible opportunities. I did an MD degree in clinical trials, which took a long time as trials do span over a long period, but I made it work for me; I did it over six years, which is quite unusual, but I had my two children in that time and took maternity leave and worked part time, and it worked. 
At the end of my MD degree, I realised I’d got the research bug!

I discovered there wasn’t a defined ‘research’ career path and was very fortunate in that I kind of carved out my own niche and now have a job that uses my specific skill set.

If I had to give people advice, I would say go for something that interests you and you enjoy.  Things can be very frustrating sometimes, but if you’ve got a genuine interest in the work you are doing, that can really help.  I would also say maintain an open mind and be prepared to be flexible, as with any bit of research you do, you answer one question and then you generate a whole load more . Research seldom seems to follow a straight line.

Can we find out a bit more about any mentors that particularly inspired you?


The decision I made to go into kidney medicine was largely due to a couple of individuals who worked with and were really enthusiastic and passionate about their specialty. 
They took me under their wing and invited me to join them in clinic or to see a new patient. They shared their critical thinking with me, so I was able to understand how they analysed things. I think seeing these passionate people, who nurtured my interest and shared how they worked through problems, really changed my direction.

I have also had various other influential mentors, for example my MD supervisor is always there if I wanted to sound them out about something or ask them if I was going down the right path. I really trust their judgement and advice and that is very helpful. I also think the more people you speak to, even if they aren’t fulfilling a formal mentor role, the more these sorts of interactions can really shape your career.

What challenges / difficulties have you faced as a female researcher?


In the area of nephrology, there have been a few female professors so it has been demonstrated that women can get to the top.

I found that personally, I had to carve out my own route, as I have a family as well as my career, but feel this keeps me very grounded. For example, even if it’s been the worst day at work, and you have not done something to the absolute best of your ability (I am a perfectionist) there’s always someone at home at the end of the day who completely grounds you and brings you back to reality. I can sometimes find myself working 7 days a week, because of the general nature of research and my drive to move things forwards, but it is great to be able to demonstrate to my children, how much I love my job, that I can do what I want to do and it makes a difference to people’s lives.

In recent years, as more and more women have decided to study medicine, things have had to improve. For example, it’s now more accepted that women may break from their training for a period to have children. It’s now accepted that you can work less than full time, I think it is very challenging in some specific areas of medicine, such as surgery where there are a lot of out-of-hours work. The other big challenge is the need to move around a lot more to different jobs and this can be really tough for families. I have been lucky in that I have been able to remain in the East of England.  So although things have improved in some ways there are still big challenges.

Overall, I think, with regards to women in STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics] things are continuing to improve. 
It’s a lot better than it used to be. and I think you’re now judged on your ability regardless of whether you are male or female, but it is tricky fitting it in around the other elements of life.

To conclude, how important is the International Day of Women and Girls in Science?

 I think it’s a great day, particularly for children at school or young people at university who don’t know what they want to do. 
It shows the opportunities that are out there and the huge variety of jobs, many of which are non-traditional, that exist in the field of science and technology. It allows all to excel on their merits, regardless of whether they’re male or female.

The NIHR Cambridge BRC is part of the NIHR and hosted by Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in partnership with the University of Cambridge. We are at the heart of the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, Europe’s largest health research area.

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11 Feb

Happy #InternationalDayofWomenandGirlsinScience
To commemorate this annual celebration, we interviewed three women from our Cambridge BRC. Look out for Rona Smith's full interview on our website in the coming days..
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cambridgebrc NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre @cambridgebrc ·
11 Feb

Happy #InternationalDayofWomenandGirlsinScience
For this global celebration of women in science, we interviewed 3 women from our Cambridge BRC. Look out for Jo McPeake's interview on our website in the coming days
@CUH_NHS @Cambridge_Uni @NIHRresearch @UNESCO @WomenScienceDay

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cambridgebrc NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre @cambridgebrc ·
11 Feb

Happy #InternationalDayofWomenandGirlsinScience
To celebrate this global day, we interviewed three women from our Cambridge BRC. Look out for Deborah's full interview on our website in the coming days..
@CUH_NHS @Cambridge_Uni @NIHRresearch @BEARS_CI @UNESCO @WomenScienceDay

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