He received the ORNL Director’s Award for Individual Achievement in 2017. Smith’s research interests include the high-performance computer simulation of biological macromolecules, supercomputing, bioenergy, environmental biogeochemistry, drug and vaccine design and biological neutron scattering. He has published over 400 peer-reviewed scientific articles. 117 people have worked in his research groups, including 17 staff, 40 postdocs, 43 graduate students, and 8 long-term visitors. 40 former group members have moved on to university faculty positions, 11 are national laboratory staff scientists and 14 work in industry.