Dr. David S. Smith
Postdoctoral Research AssociateLunar and Planetary Laboratory
Research
I study astrophysics, space physics, and astrobiology, with special attention to the effects of "extraplanetary" radiation, such as cosmic rays, X-rays, and gamma-rays, on planetary habitability and manned space missions.
Lately I've been working on the physics of the solar wind and how it interacts with planetary atmospheres and the interstellar medium.
My primary collaborators are Joe Giacalone (LPL) and John Scalo and J. Craig Wheeler (UT-Austin).
See my CV for a list of my publications.
Education
PhD, The University of Texas at Austin, 2006 (dissertation, 4 MB pdf)
AM, Harvard University, 2002
BS and BA, The University of Texas at Austin, 2001
Interesting Notes and Figures
Cartoon of high-energy photon
transport in atmospheres
Derivation of the Rayleigh-Taylor
instability
Code
Using the GNU C Standard Library Function sincos() in Fortran
C++ ODE integrator class using the Dormand-Prince (7,8) pair (.tgz)
C++ class for large data cubes
C++ histogram class
C++ CPU timing class
Dynamic arrays in C with macros
Generating uniform deviates from /dev/random
Fast IO in C for scientists
Interactive dice roller
Convert a C double to IEEE-754 binary
Writing better scientific code
Benefits of Ada for scientific computing