Ellen Smith received her BSN from the University of Vermont in 1982. She received her MS in Nursing/Adult Health in 1991 and her Post-graduate Nurse Practitioner Certification in 1997 from the University of New Hampshire. She is an Advanced Oncology Certified Nurse (AOCN).

Ellen joined the oncology staff at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center's Norris Cotton Cancer Center in Hanover, New Hampshire, in 1982, becoming Assistant Head Nurse. She worked as an Oncology Staff Nurse on the Intensive Care Leukemia Unit at The Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1984. She was the Oncology Nurse Coordinator at the Columbia Medical Plan in Columbia, Maryland, from 1984 to 1986 and returned to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and the Norris Cotton Cancer Center as an Oncology Infusion Therapy Nurse in 1987. She has been a Nurse Clinician/Clinical Nurse Specialist/Adult Nurse Practitioner in Thoracic Oncology there since 1989.

She has been a clinical instructor at Dartmouth Medical School in Hanover, New Hampshire, and a nurse preceptor for undergraduate and graduate students at the University of New Hampshire, Norwich University, the University of Vermont, and MGH Institute of Health Professions since 1991.

Ellen has held several nursing posts in the Cancer and Leukemia Group B cooperative study group and was appointed Chair of the Nursing Committee in August 200. She has been a National Cancer Institute Designated Patient Education Representative since 1991, has served on many committees at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, and been a journal abstractor for ONS Nursing Scan in Oncology. She is a member of the Oncology Nursing Society, the International Lung Cancer Society, and Sigma Theta Tau, the International Nursing Honor Society.

Her research activities have included investigations of neuropathic pain, clinical trials in the rural community, treatment for non-small-cell lung cancer, the quality of life of lung cancer patients, and the retention of chemotherapy information by cancer patients. She has contributed to journal articles on various aspects of lung cancer as well as to many abstracts, monographs, and other publications in her areas of expertise.