Garrick Smith, PhD, was educated in the United Kingdom and completed a PhD in organic chemistry at the University of Reading. He embarked on his career in the pharmaceutical industry with Ciba-Geigy in Horsham, UK, and later Novartis, working as a medicinal chemist on protease inhibitor and g-protein coupled receptor (GPCR) projects in cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. In 1997 he moved to Denmark to work for H. Lundbeck A/S and has worked solely in central nervous system drug discovery since then, working on transporters, an ion channel, GPCRs and, most recently, on LRRK2. Dr. Smith has been medicinal chemistry team leader and project leader on several projects in psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders. He is today a principal scientist with responsibilities including the evaluation of new targets in neurodegenerative disorders.