James Mcquillan

James Mcquillan is a Professor of Computer Science at the School of Computer Sciences, Western Illinois University. His research spans theoretical and applied computer science, with a focus on combinatorial structures and their applications in computational problems.

• Ph.D., University of Western Ontario (1994)
• Book Author: Cryptography, Information Theory, and Error-Correction: A Handbook for the 21st Century (2021, Wiley)

Research interests include:

• Core areas: Satisfiability of Boolean expressions, Combinatorics, Finite geometries, Desargues configurations, Graph labellings, Hyperovals
• Applications: Cryptography, Error correction, Pattern matching in strings, Bioinformatics

Teaching awards highlight his excellence in graduate and undergraduate education. His recent work in Discrete Mathematics (2025) explores graph theory and combinatorial algorithms.

Scientific contributions include

• Every even cycle of order at least 8 has a mirror labeling (2025)

Awards:

• 2020-2021: College of Business and Technology Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching
• 2018-2019: School of Computer Sciences Graduate Teacher of the Year
• 2017-2018: School of Computer Sciences Undergraduate and Graduate Teacher of the Year