Dr. Nelson Rushton, inventor of SequenceL, to speak

Monday, February 17, 2020 5:00 PM-7:00 PM

Stowe Hall, Swang 108

Swang

2022 Update: The College of Computing and Technology is now the School of Computing and the School of Data Analytics and Technology.

The College of Computing & Technology will host Dr. Nelson Rushton, inventor of SequenceL, to speak on “Infinity, Computer Programming and the Tower of Babel” on Feb. 17 at 5 p.m. 

According to Rushton, there is a growing body of evidence that the absolute infinite cannot be safely ignored in the study of mathematics. In this talk, he will discuss the differences between ordinary and absolute infinities, the growing evidence that neither can be safely ignored and how, perhaps surprisingly, this bears on how we teach and discuss elementary mathematics and computer science. The talk is for a general audience, and undergraduate students are especially welcome.

Rushton received his PhD in mathematics from the University of Georgia in 1997 and his MS in artificial intelligence from the University of Georgia in 2001. He served as an assistant professor and associate professor of computer science at Texas Tech University from 2002 to 2018, and as chief scientist at Texas Multicore Technologies from 2011 to 2017. 

Rushton is an author or co-author of 33 scholarly articles and book chapters in mathematics and computer science, and a co-inventor of the SequenceL functional programming language and the P-log knowledge representation language. Jointly with Dan Cooke and Brad Nemanich, Rushton holds a patent on the compilation algorithm for SequenceL. 

SequenceL was initially developed over a 20-year period starting in 1989, mostly at Texas Tech University. It was originally made for NASA but is now under a commercial company. The programming software was designed to enable programmers to create software that is more reliable, higher performing and developed faster for less cost. 

Rushton has developed intelligent software systems for the Office of Naval Research, the U.S. Forest Service, NASA and the Department of Defense, and has been principal investigator of research contracts totaling over $1 million dollars from NASA and the DoD. Rushton retired from Texas Tech in 2019 to homeschool his son and to write “The Language of Mathematics,” a textbook on mathematical reasoning and introductory discrete mathematics.