In this paper, we introduce a radial basis function collocation method for computing solutions to the time-dependent radiative transfer equation. For these computations, we use finite differences to discretize the time coordinate, a discrete ordinate method to discretize the directional variable, and an expansion in radial basis functions to approximate the spatial dependence of the solution. The main advantages of the RBF method are that it does not require any mesh or grid, achieves spectral accuracy in multi-dimensions for arbitrary node layouts, and it is extremely simple to implement. © 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.