Thomas studied physics at RWTH Aachen University and has held research positions at Dalhousie University, at the RIKEN research centre in Japan, and at Oxford University. He is now a full professor in Computer Science at Dalhousie University. Thomas worked with neural networks for over 25 years and has published a textbook on computational neuroscience and recently a textbook on machine learning with Oxford University Press. He has applied machine learning to robotics, medical data analysis, and sonar data for many years.