Dr. Smithe is a specialist in theoretical and computational electromagnetics and plasma physics. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, in 1987, for the study of parallel gradient effects on RF heating in tokamak fusion devices. He continued this work as a post-doc in the RF modeling group at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, where he helped develop theory, modeling tools, and data analysis for the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) experiment.

Dr. Smithe was employed at Mission Research Corporation from 1989 to 2005, where his main focus was modeling of numerous beam, plasma, and microwave devices using electromagnetic particle-in-cell software. Dr. Smithe has extensive experience in modeling traveling wave and klystron microwave sources, including sheet beam and multiple beam klystrons. This work also included software development for the MAGIC Tool Suite commercial software product. Dr. Smithe is author or coauthor of many of its popular algorithms, including eigenmode, autogrid, and parallel computing capabilities, OpenGL geometry visualization, and many of the interactive data displays and engineering diagnostics.

Dr. Smithe's ongoing collaboration with the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory led to the METS95 software, which introduced the All-Orders solution method, for modeling of non-local plasma heating effects associated with high temperatures and high harmonic resonance. Dr. Smithe is a participant in the DOE's SciDAC RF project, where he continues to work on improving RF modeling capability for fusion plasmas, including wavelet basis methods, and time-domain approaches for modeling of non-linear effects in the plasma edge.