Mark Smith joined the faculty of Davidson College in the psychology department in 1998. He received his B.A. from Lenoir-Rhyne College and received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Smith regularly teaches classes in General Psychology, Learning, Drugs and Behavior, Behavioral Pharmacology and Clinical Psychopharmacology.

Dr. Smith's primary line of research focuses on the behavioral effects of opioids and cocaine. A major focus of this research involves identifying the variables contributing to differences in drug sensitivity across individuals. Dr. Smith's research has shown that these variables fall along a number of dimensions that include characteristics of the user (i.e., biological), characteristics of the drug (i.e., pharmacological) and characteristics of the setting and situation in which the drug is administered (i.e., environmental). In his laboratory, Dr. Smith and his students use a number of animal models to examine potential behavioral and pharmacological interventions that may serve to reduce drug self-administration.

Dr. Smith is a member of the American Psychological Association, the Society for Neuroscience, the College on the Problems of Drug Dependence, and the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. He has 32 journal publications and 40 presentations at national and international conferences. His research is supported, in part, by funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.