Stacey D. Smith is an associate professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder. Her research focuses on plant trait evolution and spans the fields of phylogenetics, evolutionary genetics, comparative methods, and pollination ecology. Supported by a British Marshall fellowship, she earned an MPhil in botanical diversity from the Universities of Reading and Birmingham in the United Kingdom in 2001. She returned to the United States to pursue a doctoral degree in botany at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. After obtaining her PhD in 2006, she conducted postdoctoral research at Duke University through a National Institutes of Health Ruth L. Kirschstein fellowship before transitioning to a faculty position at the University of Nebraska and later at the University of Colorado-Boulder. Here at CU, she teaches courses in plant biology and phylogenetics for undergraduate and graduate students and sponsors outreach events to promote public understanding of plant diversity and evolution.