Thomas Nelson’s Homepage

Who am I?

I teach computer science instructor at the University of Colorado. I'm interested in numerical computation, languages and compilers, and computer science pedagogy.

Courses I teach

I’m currently teaching for the post-baccalaurate program. I teach:

Education

Ph.D. Thesis

DSLs and Search for Linear Algebra Performance

Advisor: Elizabeth Jessup
I designed search algorithms and ran performance testing for two domain-specific languages, in the domains of matrix and tensor algebra. These languages allow the user to specify high-level mathematical kernels, and the search algorithms automatically test many code transformations and optimizations, searching for best performance on CPUs and GPUs.

Master's Thesis

Genetic Algorithms with Chaotic Population Dynamics

Advisor: Elizabeth Bradley
I created a genetic algorithm with a population that could grow and shrink periodically or chaotically. I then evaluated the algorithm's performance under fixed, periodic, and chaotic populations in solving optimization problems.

Work Experience

Publications

Posters and Talks

Thomas Nelson, Geoffrey Belter, Jeremy Siek, Boyana Norris, Elizabeth Jessup. Search Strategies for Empirical Autotuning in Linear Algebra. Presentation, SIAM CSE 2013.

Xing Jie Zhong, Thomas Nelson, Elizabeth Jessup, Jeremy Siek. Population Size Effects in Genetic Algorithms for Auto Tuning Technical Poster, SIAM CSE 2013.

Christopher Gropp, Geoffrey Belter, Elizabeth Jessup, Thomas Nelson, Boyana Norris, Jeremy Siek. Build-to-Order Linear Algebra Kernels Technical Poster, Supercomputing, 2012.

Geoff Belter, Elizabeth Jessup, Ian Karlin, Thomas Nelson, Boyana Norris, Jeremy Siek. Exploring the optimization space for build to order matrix algebra Technical Report ANL/MCS-P1890-0511, Argonne National Laboratory, May 2011.

Contact Me