Loyola University Chicago

Doyle Center 301

1052 W Loyola Avenue

Chicago, IL 60660

Hi! You’ve reached the home page of (Prof.|Dr.)? George K. Thiruvathukal. The regex syntax indicates that it is optional to use Prof. or Dr. (and their expanded forms) when addressing me. I am on a first name basis with just about everyone, which is a tradition passed on to me by my PhD advisor, Thomas W. Christopher, who always insisted that I call him TC (tee-cee) from the moment we started working together at the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1988. Most people struggle with Thiruvathukal, so using George is not only encouraged but highly recommended.

So here is a little bit about me. I earned the Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Computer Science from Illinois Institute of Technology in 1995 and 1990, respectively, and B.S. in Computer Science and Physics (double major) with a Mathematics minor from Lewis University in 1988.

As a Computer Science major at Lewis University, I received the department’s top graduating student award; as a Physics major at same, I was inducted into the Sigma Pi Sigma Physics National honor society. During the summer of my junior year, I worked with Philip J. Hatcher at the University of New Hampshire on a NSF-funded summer REU program focused on compiler construction, where our tools led to the development of a portable Data Parallel C dialect inspired by the C* Language used to program the Connection Machine.

My doctoral research focused on higher-level approaches to concurrent, parallel, and distributed programming with an emphasis on models, languages, libraries, middleware, tools, and techniques. The culmination of this research was a book in Sun Microsystems Press and the development of a class library, which was cited as prior art and related work in JSR-166, Concurrency Utilities (a.k.a. java.util.concurrent).

Simultaneously with my doctoral studies, I worked in the computing and engineering industry from 1989-1996 for Technology Advisors (a private consultancy), Tellabs, R.R. Donnelley and Sons, and Metromail (now Experian). Upon completing my PhD in 1995, I was a postdoctoral computer scientist at Argonne National Laboratory, where I worked with Ian Foster et al on grid computing and getting messaging middleware (Message Passing Interface) to work on the first version of Globus.

My current work addresses software engineering for science and machine learning; low-power computer vision; computational neuroscience; crowdsourcing to aid in classification and machine learning; platform studies/gaming studies; computing education; computing history; and digital music.

Beyond academic computer science, I have a strong interest in information technology; ethical, legal, and social issues in computing; entrepreneurship; and broadening participation in computing. See the Software and Systems Laboratory for more details!

Selected publications–past and present–are included below. Feel free to browse my publications for my body of work.

## selected publications

1. IEEE Conference
A Survey of Methods for Low-Power Deep Learning and Computer Vision
In 2020 IEEE 6th World Forum on Internet of Things (WF-IoT) 2020
2. IEEE Conference
FLIC: A Distributed Fog Cache for City-Scale Applications
In 2020 IEEE International Conference on Fog Computing (ICFC) 2020
3. IEEE Conference
Crowdsourcing Detection of Sampling Biases in Image Datasets
In Proceedings of The Web Conference 2020 2020
4. Frontiers Journal
A Computational Theory for the Emergence of Grammatical Categories in Cortical Dynamics
Frontiers in Neural Circuits 2020
5. Tech Report
Observing Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic using Worldwide Network Cameras
2020
6. IEEE Conference
Exercises Integrating High School Mathematics with Robot Motion Planning
In 2019 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE) 2019
7. PLOS ONE
Phonetic Acquisition in Cortical Dynamics, a Computational Approach
PLOS ONE 2019
8. IEEE Magazine
See the World Through Network Cameras
Computer 2019
9. IEEE Conference
A Survey of Software Metric Use in Research Software Development
In 2018 IEEE 14th International Conference on e-Science (e-Science) 2018