Nathan L. Thompson PhD, Dr.

Nathan L. Thompson PhD, Dr.

Nathan L. Thompson PhD, Dr.

Associate Teaching Professor

Mathematics, Statistics, and Physics · Fairmount College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Jabara Hall 313
Main Campus
Campus Box 33

Office hours

11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday

Overview

Nathan Thompson is a Mathematics teacher and researcher. He earned his doctorate from Wichita State in 2018, studying inverse problems under Professor Alexander Bukhgeym. Prior to that, he earned a master’s degree in Mathematics (2013) and a bachelor’s degree in Physics (2010). Since graduating, he has been working at Wichita State teaching primarily Calculus, Computational Mathematics, and Differential Equations. Nathan finds the most joy in teaching when showing students the hidden intricacies of course concepts and connecting those to their lived experience.

Recently, Nathan has been researching quantum computing and machine learning with colleagues at Wichita State, focusing on quantum algorithm development and implementation. He also is interested in partial differential equations and inverse problems, specifically problems connected to astrophysics.

Areas of Research Interest

  • Quantum Computing
  • Machine Learning
  • Inverse Problems

Areas of Teaching Interest

  • Differential Equations
  • Computational Mathematics
  • Linear Algebra

Publications

  • N. L. Thompson and A. L. Bukhgeim. “Scalar and vector tomography for the weighted transport equation with application to helioseismology” Journal of Inverse and Ill-posed Problems, vol. 31, no. 1, 2023, pp. 117-145. https://doi.org/10.1515/jiip-2021-0001
  • J. E. Steck, N. L. Thompson, and E.C. Behrman (2022). Programming Quantum Hardware via Levenberg-Marquardt Machine Learning. In: Intelligent Quantum Information Processing. CRC Press.
  • N. L. Thompson, N. H. Nguyen, E. C. Behrman, and J. E. Steck, “Experimental pairwise entanglement estimation for an n-qubit system,” Quantum Information Processing, vol. 19, p. 394, Nov. 2020.
  • N. L. Thompson, J. E. Steck, and E. C. Behrman, “A non-algorithmic approach to ‘programming’ quantum computers via machine learning,” in IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing & Engineering, IEEE Xplore Digital Library, Oct. 2020.
  • J. E. Steck, E. C. Behrman, and N. L. Thompson, “Machine learning applied to programming quantum computers,” in AIAA Scitech 2019 Forum, Jan. 2019.
  • B. Kardakov, A. A. Bukhgeim, A. L. Bukhgeim, W. Ingle, and N. L. Thompson, “Finite dimensional inverse problem for the wave equation,” in Proceedings from the 8th International Conference on Theory and Numerical Methods for Inverse and Ill-Posed Problems, Sept. 2016.

Areas of Service

  • Faculty Senate Secretary 2026 – Present
  • LAS Math/Natural Sciences Senator 2023 – Present