Colin Smith
Highway Investigator
Washington DC-Baltimore Area United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolColin Smith is a Highway Investigator and biomechanist with a decade of experience applying biomechanics, crash reconstruction, and forensic engineering to improve road safety. He investigates major motor vehicle collisions for the NTSB and previously led forensic biomechanics teams, blending hands-on vehicle and scene inspections (UAS, LiDAR, EDR) with injury causation analysis and expert testimony. His background spans academic research at Virginia Tech and the Center for Injury Biomechanics, applied casework in private practice, and R&D prototyping—demonstrating fluency across experimental, computational, and courtroom settings. Colin has contributed to open-source biomechanics tooling by implementing ligament models and rigorous testing in the widely used OpenSim project, reflecting strong mechanics intuition and software-savvy. Based in the Washington DC–Baltimore area, he brings a rare combination of research rigor, practical reconstruction skills, and clear litigation communication. Colleagues rely on him for translating complex kinematic and kinetic data into defensible, actionable findings.
10 years of coding experience
3 years of employment as a software developer
Master of Science - MS Biomedical Engineering, Master of Science - MS Biomedical Engineering at Virginia TechBachelor of Science - BS Biomedical Engineering, Bachelor of Science - BS Biomedical Engineering at University of Florida
Spanish, English
Github Skills (10)
simulations10
simulation10
biomechanics10
mathematical10
computational-biology10
c-language10
cprogramming-language10
opensimulator10
modeling10
testing9
Programming languages (3)
Github contributions (5)
opensim-org/opensim-core
Jun 2016 - Dec 2019
SimTK OpenSim C++ libraries and command-line applications, and Java/Python wrapping.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:12 commits, 4 PRs, 61 comments in 3 years 6 months
Contributions summary:Colin primarily contributed to the development of a `Blankevoort1991Ligament` component within the OpenSim framework. Their work included implementing the ligament model, adding properties, defining force calculations, and incorporating it into the simulation. They addressed review comments, refined doxygen documentation, and added testing related to the ligament's behavior, including potential energy calculations and damping effects. This included refactoring of the spring force equations, showing a good grasp of mechanics principles.
biomechanicspythonsciencecppmusculoskeletal-models
opensim-jam-org/jam-resources
Aug 2021 - May 2022
Models, Examples, and Documentation Related to OpenSim-JAM
Contributions:21 commits, 18 pushes, 1 branch in 9 months
opensimjam
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