Professor Richard van Zyl-Smit currently holds the position of Professor and Consultant Pulmonologist within the Division of Pulmonology and the Department of Medicine at the University of Cape Town and Groote Schuur Hospital.
Prof van Zyl-Smit is also the Head of the Lung Clinical Research Unit (LCRU) at the University of Cape Town Lung Institute. He is head of the smoking cessation services at the E16 Respiratory Clinic at Groote Schuur Hospital as well the head of the adolescent respiratory services. He qualified as a pulmonologist, in 2007 and completed his PhD investigating the effects of tobacco smoke on human pulmonary immune responses to mycobacterial infection in 2011. After a post-doc placement in New York at the end of 2011, he returned to UCT to take up a position at the Lung Institute. He has a plethora of published peer reviewed research articles, is a sort after International Speaker, and has also published his own book of a collection of essays of a front line healthcare professional during the COVID epidemic ‘Thoughts on a Saturday morning.’