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| Home | John Thornton |
Other Positions:
Associate Director of the Institute for Integrated and Intelligent Systems (IIIS)
National ICT Australia (NICTA) Contributed Researcher
New Book:
In 2007 I published The Foundations of Computing and the
Information Technology Age through Pearson Prentice Hall (ISBN 9780733988486). The book acts as a text for
the first year Foundations of Computing and Communication (1004ICT) core subject,
and develops a new perspective on the development of information technology, placing it within the broader context of the
evolution of scientific and technological thinking. After providing an overview of the history of computing (until
the end of WWII), the book examines the connections between the
development of computer technology and the rationalisation of control that lies behind the phenomenon of modern
global civilisation. The text then examines how scientific, technological and computational concepts have
come to dominate our understanding of life on earth and develops a broader and more inclusive perspective that once again
places the reality of human consciousness at the centre of existence.
For Academic Staff: Order an Instructor's Copy from Pearson Education Australia.
For Students and Members of the Public: Order a Copy Online from the
Co-op Bookshop for $67.95 (full price, 10% discount for students).
FOR MORE DETAILS SEE INSIDE THE BOOK HERE
Research: My research is in the area of artificial intelligence and has mainly concentrated on developing local search techniques for constraint satisfaction, satisfiability and temporal reasoning. This work culminated in 2007 when Duc Nghia Pham, Abdul Sattar and I received a distinguished paper award at the International Joint Conference for Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-07) for our work on Building Structure into Local Search for SAT. My second main strand of research has been concerned with the more overarching task of developing systems that can exhibit robust behaviours in real-world environments. This led me to become involved in Griffith University's robotics research, which has included participating in the FIRA and RoboCup international robot soccer competitions. Most recently I have become involved with the work of Jeff Hawkins and his computational model of the neocortex. In this context, I am working with Trevor Hine, Michael Blumenstein and Jolon Faichney on developing a more effective temporal pooling algorithm for the recently released Hierarchical Temporal Memory software in collaboration with Dileep George at Numenta. My work is now conducted under the umbrella of the Institute for Integrated and Intelligent Systems (IIIS) of which I am an Associate Director with responsibility for the Gold Coast campus. I also contribute as a researcher to the SAFE Agents group at NICTA Queensland. Within the School of ICT I am the Research Higher Degree co-ordinator within the SEET group, convenor of the Gold Coast Bachelor of IT with Honours and I was program committee co-chair for the Australian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, held on the Gold Coast in December 2007.
Teaching: I am the Gold Coast convenor of the Bachelor of Information Technology (BIT) Honours degree. For semester 1, 2008, I am the overall and Gold Coast convenor of the core first year course: Foundations of Computing and Communication (1004ICT), Gold Coast convenor of the third year elective Machine Learning and Perception (3511ICT) and convenor of the following Honours and Masters level subjects: Honours Dissertation (6207INT), Research Methods in IT (7112ICT). During the second half of 2007 I will be Gold Coast convenor of the second year elective Systems Programming (2420ICT).