David Thornton

Professor of Computer Science
338 Ayers Hall
256-782-5359
thornton@jsu.edu

David Thornton is a Professor with 22 years teaching experience. He developed the game development concentration for computer science majors.

In 2023, he was named a 2023-2024 Fulbright Scholar by the US Department of State, where he served as a visiting professor at Graz University of Technology in Graz, Austria. There he taught two graduate courses in game development and virtual reality while collaborating with Game Lab Graz to design and implement new AI-supported speech control features for Dr. Johanna Pirker’s successful Maroon virtual reality project, which allows students to conduct immersive physics simulations.

In 2014, he was awarded the George Mehaffy Excellence in Learning Technology Award for the creation of multiple web-based gamification tools for use in high school and university curricula, which are in use in over 40 schools in 7 different countries. Dr. Thornton has worked with his colleagues on funded research, workshops, and software development for DoD-NSA and the Secret Service.

His tech interests include virtual reality, game development, gamification, multimodal and speech-enabled interfaces, human-computer interaction, and AI-supported software development.