Professor Alan Smyth was appointed to the post of Dean of the School of Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedical Sciences, at Queens University Belfast, in 2023. After undergraduate training in Cambridge and the Charing Cross and Westminster Medical School, he undertook research and postgraduate training in paediatrics at the University of Liverpool and Alder Hey Children’s Hospital. Prof Smyth was Professor of Child Health at the University of Nottingham from 2010 to 2023 and he retains an honorary appointment at the University and Nottingham Children’s Hospital. He is the Co-ordinating Editor of “Cochrane Cystic Fibrosis” and has a research programme in MRI imaging of the lung and gut in cystic fibrosis.