David Thornton

David Thornton is a Professor of Computer Science at Jacksonville State University's College of Arts, Humanities, and Sciences. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from Auburn University (2008), and MS/BS degrees from Jacksonville State University (2003/2001). His research focuses on game development, cybersecurity awareness through gamification, multimodal interfaces, and human-computer interaction. He leads the game development concentration for computer science majors and has developed widely-used gamification tools adopted in 40+ schools across 7 countries.

Dr. Thornton's work emphasizes cybersecurity education through interactive games and has been funded by DoD-NSA grants. His research collaborations explore player behavior analysis, EEG monitoring in game environments, and dynamic difficulty adjustments. He received the George Mehaffy Excellence in Learning Technology Award (2014) for his educational technology innovations.

His publications span cybersecurity training methodologies, game-based learning systems, and multimodal interface design. Recent work highlights include analyzing EEG data from cybersecurity games and developing low-stakes mathematics placement tools. He actively promotes cybersecurity awareness through workshops and educational game development initiatives.