Thomas P. Caudell

Thomas P. Caudell
Professor

Additional Title: Director, UNM Center for High Performance Computing

Contact Information:
(505) 277-5637
tpc@ece.unm.edu
faculty website

Degrees:
PhD, Physics, University of Arizona, 1980 MS, Physics, University of Arizona, 1978 BS, Physics, Honors, California State University, 1973 BS, Mathematics, California State University, 1973

Tom Caudell was appointed to direct UNM’s Center for High Performance Computing beginning in February 2007. The center supports faculty- led, computing-based research throughout UNM, and the center’s staff fosters interdisciplinary collaborations based on computation.
Dr. Caudell is creator of a software application called Flatland, named in honor of Edwin Abbott’s 1884 book by that name, designed to serve as a virtual laboratory that scientists can use to experiment with computational problems in a natural and intuitive manner, especially using models of cognitive neural systems.

Promoted to full professor in 2007, Dr. Caudell’s research interests include neural networks, virtual reality, machine vision, robotics and genetic algorithms. He teaches courses in programming, computer games, neural networks, virtual reality, computer graphics and pattern recognition.

He has been active in the field of virtual reality and neural networks since 1986, has more than 75 publications in these areas, and in 1993 helped organize IEEE’s first Virtual Reality Annual International Symposium. He is also an active member of the IEEE, the International Neural Network Society, and the Association for Computing Machinery.

Current research is focusing on the development and application of a theory of brain structure and function. He and colleagues are applying the mathematics of category theory to understand the computational structure of biologically inspired neural systems. He is also developing a large-scale neural simulation and visualization to study the functioning of neural brain models embodied in virtual agents. These simulations use the supercomputers at the UNM CHPC and the New Mexico Computing Applications Center machine (Encanto) located in Rio Rancho, New Mexico.