Dr. Smieja is a professor in the Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine at McMaster University and a microbiologist and infectious diseases physician at the Hamilton Regional Laboratory Program. Additionally, he is a founding member of the Ontario Working Group for the Rapid Diagnosis of Emerging Infections. He is also an associate member of the Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and of the Department of Medicine at McMaster University. He acts as an active staff in the Department of Laboratory Medicine at St. Joseph’s Healthcare and Hamilton Health Services.

He earned his medical degree at the University of Western Ontario, and then completed a diploma in tropical medicine and hygiene at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He then moved on to McMaster University where he earned a Master of Science and PhD in clinical health sciences.

Dr. Smieja’s primary research interests are in the diagnosis of respiratory and gastrointestinal infections and the role of infections in respiratory and cardiac diseases. He is also involved in the design and improvement of pre-analytic, analytic, and post-analytic aspects of respiratory virus testing.

He is a co-investigator for CTN 293: REPRIEVE Trial, which is testing the ability of a treatment (pitavastatin), taken daily, to reduce the risk of heart disease among people living with HIV. He has contributed to several CTN research publications including the discussion of a study which found that Herpes Simplex Virus Type 2 coinfection does not accelerate the effects of an untreated HIV infection.