Robert Mcgibbon is an algorithm developer with 14 years of experience bridging high-performance scientific computing and production engineering, currently building trading algorithms at Hudson River Trading after a nearly nine-year research tenure at D. E. Shaw Research. He holds a Ph.D. in theoretical chemistry from Stanford and a summa cum laude A.B. in Chemistry & Computer Science from Princeton, bringing deep numerical methods and low-level optimization expertise to real-world systems. His open-source contributions span performance-critical libraries—from C extensions and GPU-backend fixes in OpenMM and MDTraj to numerical algorithms in SciPy and packaging/CI work for manylinux/auditwheel—demonstrating fluency across C++, Python, and DevOps. Notably, he has improved portability of Python scientific ecosystems by integrating patchelf-based RPATH management for Linux wheels and implemented core linear-algebra routines used in scientific packages. Known for combining rigorous research instincts with pragmatic engineering, he elevates robustness and reproducibility in complex simulation and deployment workflows.
14 years of coding experience
9 years of employment as a software developer
A.B. Summa Cum Laude Chemistry & Computer Science, A.B. Summa Cum Laude Chemistry & Computer Science at Princeton University
Clayton High School
Ph.D. Theoretical Chemistry, Ph.D. Theoretical Chemistry at Stanford University
Auditing and relabeling cross-distribution Linux wheels.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Contributions:2 releases, 137 commits, 43 PRs in 4 years 5 months
Contributions summary:Robert primarily contributed to the `auditwheel` project by implementing and refactoring code related to the analysis of Linux wheels. Their work includes implementing new commands, refining the policy for external library references, and fixing issues related to the handling of shared libraries. A notable aspect of their work is integrating and utilizing `patchelf` for modifying the RPATH of shared libraries within the wheels, indicating a focus on creating self-contained and portable Linux packages. This work appears targeted towards a core functionality of the project, namely building and fixing wheels for the manylinux platform.
An open library for the analysis of molecular dynamics trajectories
Role in this project:
Backend Developer
Contributions:5 releases, 27 reviews, 1865 commits in 9 years 7 months
Contributions summary:Robert primarily contributed to the core functionality of the MDTraj library through low-level C code development focused on improving the performance and functionality of the core geometry calculations for molecular dynamics simulations. The user made changes to support the new "center" functions and also worked on implementing functionality for the "drid" metric, suggesting a focus on computational efficiency and data analysis. The user also refactored and fixed issues in the XTCTrajectoryFile code.
pythonmdtrajmolecular-dynamicspdbpdb-files
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Robert Mcgibbon - Algorithm Developer at Hudson River Trading