Academic Bio(, 2011)

Education

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.

Research

My early research was in neural networks and genetic/evolutionary algorithms. Typical early papers from grad school:

  • K. Kirby and M. Conrad. "The Enzymatic Neuron as a Reaction-Diffusion Network of Cyclic Nucleotides.” Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, Vol. 46, 765-782 (1984).
  • K. Kirby and M. Conrad. "Intraneuronal Dynamics as a Substrate For Evolutionary Learning." Physica D, Vol. 22, 150-175 (1986).

Those papers touched on continuous computing and knowledge representation in dynamical systems ("Turing's Other Machine").

My most notable accomplishment in those days was being (apparently) the first researcher to clearly articulate what would become known as "reservoir computing" (as in echo state networks and liquid state machines). I called it "context reverberation". See this tile for links some to of these papers.

This led to an interest in natural computability in general, and in particular in biological and quantum computation. Two representative papers:

  • K. Kirby. "Biological Adaptabilities and Quantum Entropies." BioSystems Vol. 64, pp. 33-41. (2002).
  • K. Kirby. "Hermeneutics and Biomolecular Computation." Optical Memory and Neural Networks, Vol. 4 No. 2, pp. 111-117 (1995).

Here is a paper that is about as weird as my academic writing got (before 2026):

  • K. Kirby. “Excess, Locality and the Meaning Bath.” Position paper, Fetzer Institute Workshop on Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness Studies, Kalamazoo, August 31 - September 1995.
A set of slides was all I presented; there were no proceedings. This paper was just the enhanced transcription. But I got the chance to talk with thinkers like Roger Penrose and Evan Thompson (and his father, William Irwin Thompson) in the woods of western Michigan.

In a very different vein, I have always been interested in pedagogy, trying to construct accessible and interdisciplinary approaches to mathematical topics:

  • K. Kirby. "Of Neurons, Memories, and Rank-One Corrections." College Mathematics Journal Vol. 28 No. 1, pp. 2-19 (1997).
  • K. Kirby. "Beyond the Celestial Sphere: Oriented Projective Geometry and Computer Graphics." Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 75 No. 5, pp. 351-366 (2002).

The first was a tour of the classical art of memory using the Dirac notation (from quantum mechanics), leading into the mathematics of associative neural networks. It won the Mathematical Association of America's George Polya Award in 1998.

I spent the 2000-01 academic year on sabbatical as a visiting research professor at Sogang University in Seoul.

I hold the Evan and Lindsay Stein Professorship in Biocomputing at NKU. I am grateful that the Steins allowed me to retain this endowed professorship during my three years as department chair then fifteen years as college dean.

Teaching

In computer science, at the upper level I especially enjoyed teaching the theory of computation, AI, and computer graphics (esp. game engines and game physics). But I've also taught the full classic CS backbone from introductory programming through software engineering.

Teaching neural networks has bracketed a long part of my academic career. In 1989 as a new Assistant Professor, I piloted CEG 765 Foundations of Neurocomputing at Wright State University. In 2018 as a Dean in his seventh year, I piloted CSC 425 Deep Learning at Northern Kentucky University.

I've also enjoyed teaching across the disciplines, particularly Principles of Informatics and various interdisciplinary Honors seminars on computing and linguistics.

Other

From 2008 to 2011 I was Chair of the Computer Science Department. I was Principal Investigator on a National Science Foundation CPATH grant, "Informatics at Multiple Scales". I had served as director of the NKU Computer Science program from 1999 to 2005 (except during my 2000-01 sabbatical year).

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

Among my greatest pre-dean NKU experiences were as faculty advisor on NKU's Alternative Spring Break, a week in Mexico involving homestays and volunteer service work in Mexico City and the state of Morelos, in 1999, 2000, 2003, 2006 and 2008.

On July 1, 2011, I became dean of the NKU College of Informatics. I departed from that role on July 1, 2026 to start a one-year research/writing sabbatical.