Kevin G. Kirby
Evan Stein Professor of Biocomputing
Department of Computer Science, Northern Kentucky University Highland Heights, KY 41099
ST 340 - kirby@nku.edu - (859) 572-6544

I earned my PhD in Computer Science from Wayne State University in 1988. My dissertation advisor was Michael Conrad.  My graduate minor was in Physics. 

My doctoral research involved using evolutionary and genetic algorithms to control learning in biomolecular neural nets. My undergraduate degree was in mathematics, with a minor in linguistics.

The latter paper briefly touched on continuous computing and knowledge representation in dynamical systems ("Turing's Other Machine"). This led to an interest in natural computability in general, and in particular in biological and quantum computation. Two representative papers:

In addition to this, I have always been interested in pedagogy, trying to construct elementary approaches to advanced and daunting topics. This is the goal of my current book on linear algebra for computer scientists. Two representative papers:

The first was a tour of the classical art of memory using the Dirac notation (from quantum mechanics), leading in to the mathematics of associative neural networks, and won the George Polya award.

Some cross-displinary student projects at NKU I have been involved in since 2001 include optimization of drinking water treatment using neural networks, quantum genetic algorithms, Eulerian-Lagrangian simulations for marine harvest refuge assessment, and (new in 2006) Delaunay tesselations processed by kernel methods for protein structure prediction.

I spent  the 2000-01 academic year on sabbatical in Seoul, Korea.

I am currently the Evan Stein Professor of Biocomputing. My projects in this regard include ecosystem modeling and applications of information geometry to bioinformatics.

Computer graphics and artificial intelligence are the areas I have specialized in teaching at the upper level at NKU. I also enjoy teaching introductory programming and data structures.

Before coming to NKU I taught at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. There I designed the graduate courses in neural networks and numerical matrix computation, as well as an undergraduate course in C for Business (!).

I began teaching C++ at Wright State in 1989 and Java at NKU at 1997. I taught object-oriented software construction as a guest instructor at Earlham College (while still at WSU). I continue to be interested in object-oriented design and programming, and typically weave UML, design patterns and software componentry into many of my current courses.

In addition to university teaching, between 1989 and 1994 I developed and taught two-day workshops on neural network applications at the Intelligent Systems Applications Center in Dayton. The audience consisted of engineers from local industry and from Wright Patterson Air Force Base.

I served as director of the NKU Computer Science program from 1999 to 2005 (except during my sabbatical year). I was Vice-Chair then Chair of NKU Graduate Council from 2003 to 2005.

I was one of the authors of the proposal for CINSAM (the Center for Integrative Natural Science and Mathematics), which came into existence in 2000. 

My greatest NKU experiences have been as faculty advisor on NKU's Alternative Spring Break, a week-long trip to Mexico involving homestays and volunteer service work in Mexico City and the state of Morelos, in 1999, 2000 , 2003 and 2006.
 
If you can read Korean, see my column in the U.S. edition of Hanguk Ilbo at www.koreatimes.com.

George Polya Award, Mathematical Association of America, 1998.

Outstanding Junior Faculty Member Award, NKU College of Arts and Sciences, 1997.