Dr. Ryan Smith is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Entomology at Iowa State University with research and teaching responsibilities in Medical Entomology. His research interests primarily focus on host-parasite interactions between the mosquito vector and malaria parasites using a multi-disciplinary approach to examine how the mosquito innate immune system limits parasite infection. Dr. Smith recently joined the faculty at Iowa State University in 2015 after completing his post-doctoral training at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He received both his B.S. in Biology, and Ph.D. in Cell, Molecular, and Developmental Biology at the University of California, Riverside.