Natalie Smith, MD
Columbia University/New York Presbyterian
Natalie Smith, MD, grew up in Los Alamos, New Mexico, as a child of two chemists working at the National Laboratory, and was interested in science from a young age. She attended a liberal arts college, University of Puget Sound, where she studied biochemistry and neuroscience. Before medical school, she worked in a laboratory studying early central nervous system development in zebrafish embryos, becoming fascinated in patterns of tissue tropism. She attended medical school at the University of Washington and completed an emphasis in Underserved Community Medicine. She then matriculated to neurology residency at Columbia University where she is now a third-year resident. She is passionate about providing excellent and cost-efficient care to patients with acute neurologic illnesses with a special interest in neuroinfectious diseases. Outside of clinical care, she has become involved with hospital system-level quality improvement work to improve workflows diagnostics for neuroinfectious diseases. She plans to matriculate to a neuroinfectious disease fellowship to further her career as an academic neurohospitalist.