Professor of Surgery
Massachusetts General Hospital
Barbara L. Smith, MD, PhD is the Director of the Breast Program at Massachusetts General Hospital, is a Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School and has the MGH Trustees Chair in Breast Surgery. Dr. Smith received her undergraduate training at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an MD from Harvard Medical School's Harvard/MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology and a PhD in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics from Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
Dr. Smith’s research activities have focused on reducing the extent of surgery and radiation required to treat breast cancer, improved approaches for lumpectomy margin assessment, and 3-dimensional breast anatomy as it relates to breast surgery and pathologic analysis of specimens, including nipple sparing mastectomies. She has developed a novel technique for an oncologically safe and cosmetically superior nipple sparing mastectomy. She is the PI of 2 NIH-funded multicenter trials of the Lumicell Imaging System in breast cancer lumpectomy margin assessment.
Dr. Smith is a past Chair of the Society of Surgical Oncology Breast Program Directors Committee and is Co-Director of the Breast Surgery Fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.