His interdisciplinary research interests encompass energy, environmental, food, population, economic, historical and public policy studies. He has also applied these approaches to energy, food and environmental affairs of China.

Smil completed his undergraduate studies and began his graduate work at the Faculty of Natural Sciences of Charles University in Prague, where he took 35 classes a week, 10 months a year, for five years. “They taught me nature, from geology to clouds,” Smil said. After graduation he refused to join the Communist party, undermining his job prospects, though he found employment at a regional planning office. He married Eva, who was studying to be a physician. In 1969, following the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and Eva’s graduation, the Smils emigrated to the United States, leaving the country months before a Soviet travel ban shut the borders. “That was not a minor sacrifice, you know?” Smil says. Smil then received his Ph.D. in geography from the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences of Pennsylvania State University in 1971.