Awards and Honors
- Member, National Academy of Engineering
- Crick-Jacobs Senior Fellow, Salk Institute, La Jolla (2005-present)
- Harry E. Gruber Chair in Computer Science and Telecommunications, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Jacobs School of Engineering, UCSD (2002 - present)
- Added to University of Missouri Notable Alumni Wall 2010
- CENIC 2009 Innovation Award for Experimental/Development Applications, Project GreenLight [with Tom DeFanti and Greg Hidley]
- Listed as one of 30 Notable Graduate Alumni of the University of Missouri (2009)
- Australian-American Leadership Dialog Scholar, October 2008.
- R Systems, a company in Urbana, IL, names their supercomputer 'R Smarr' after Larry Smarr 2008
- Honorary Ph.D. "Doctor of Science Honoris Causa", University of Missouri at Columbia May 17, 2008
- USC Annenberg Fellow, May 2006 - 2008
- CENIC 2006 Innovation Award for Experimental/Development Applications, iGrid2005 [with Maxine Brown and Tom DeFanti]
- IEEE Computer Society Tsutomu Kanai Award for distributed computing systems achievements 2006
- ESRI Lifetime Achievement Award 2006
- Telluride Tech Festival Honoree 2005
- 2002 Technology Marshall in the 45h Annual La Jolla Christmas Parade and Holiday Festival
- San Diego 2002 Headliner of the Year, Technology Category, San Diego Press Club
- Named Swanlund Chaired Professor, Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2000)
- Champaign County Most Valuable Citizen Award, Champaign County Chamber of Commerce (1998)
- National Academy of Engineering, Section 5 (Computer Science and Engineering) (1995)
- Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1994)
- Listed in Fortune Magazine, Special Issue, Spring/Summer 1991, "The New Century" in the article "Twenty Five Who Help The U. S. Win"
- Fellow, American Physical Society (1991)
- Franklin Institute's Delmer S. Fahrney Gold Medal for Leadership in Science or Technology (1990)
- Distinguished Alumnus Award, College of Arts and Science, University of Missouri at Columbia, 1985 (2nd recipient)
- Included in the 1984 Esquire "Register of Outstanding Americans Under Age 40" (272 listed)
- Max-Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysics Fellowship (summers 1982 and 1983)
- Beckman Fellow (1980 - 1982)
- Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow (1980 - 1984)
- Junior Fellow, Harvard University (1976 - 1979)
- NSF International Travel Grant (1974)
- Lane Scholar (1973 - 1974) - outstanding work in classical physics at University of Texas
- National Science Foundation Fellow (1970 - 1973)
- Woodrow Wilson Independent Study Award (1971) - top 10% of Woodrow Wilson Fellows
- Woodrow Wilson Fellow (1970)