Robert Smith
Facility Fellow at Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolRobert Smith is a Facility Fellow at the Australian National Imaging Facility and the lead developer of MRtrix3, an influential open-source toolkit for advanced diffusion MRI analysis used worldwide. With 15 years of experience bridging neuroimaging research and software engineering, he develops novel image-processing, tractography and statistical inference methods and supports Siemens 3T scanner protocols at the Melbourne Brain Centre. His work—spanning a PhD in neuroimaging, postdoctoral research on fixel-based analysis, and a research fellowship at Siemens Healthineers—focuses on making diffusion MRI tractography biologically meaningful and reproducible. An active maintainer on the MRtrix3 GitHub project, he contributes both core algorithmic improvements and user-facing tooling, including nuanced enhancements to tensor estimation and single-shell volume selection logic. Notably, he pairs deep academic insight with practical scanner-facing protocol development, ensuring methods translate from theory into routine imaging workflows.
16 years of coding experience
VCE, English, Mathematical Methods, Specialist Mathematics, Physics, Information Technology, Biology, VCE, English, Mathematical Methods, Specialist Mathematics, Physics, Information Technology, Biology at University High SchoolCertificate III, Information Technology, Certificate III, Information Technology at RMIT TAFEThe University of MelbourneBachelor, Applied Physics & Electronic Engineering, Bachelor, Applied Physics & Electronic Engineering at RMIT University
Github Skills (6)
c-language10
cprogramming-language10
diffusion-mri10
image-processing10
command-line-interface9
algorithms9
Programming languages (14)
Github contributions (5)
MRtrix3/mrtrix3
Jul 2010 - Jan 2023
MRtrix3 provides a set of tools to perform various advanced diffusion MRI analyses, including constrained spherical deconvolution (CSD), probabilistic tractography, track-density imaging, and apparent fibre density
Role in this project:
Backend Developer
Backend DeveloperContributions:3 releases, 260 reviews, 3936 commits in 12 years 8 months
Contributions summary:Robert focused on enhancing the descriptions of the dwi2tensor command by providing more verbose help information. They also modified the code of the dwi2tensor command to show the output values, and the code related to the test for the constraints that will permit the reorientation of gradient directions to be applied. The user also restored the option to perform a test for this same command. Additionally, the user modified the logic for selecting the first volume in a single shell acquisition, with a new method that is applicable to all algorithms.
deconvolutiondiffusion-mriimagingtractography
bids-standard/bids-bep016
Nov 2021 - Oct 2022
BEP016: diffusion derivatives
Contributions:25 reviews, 49 commits, 51 PRs in 10 months
diffusionderivativesbids
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