perhaps not _this_ time, that is not this 2013 GSOC, but eventually you may want to consider a lock-free priority queue algorithm for storing tasks and not use locks
although lock-free algorithms are somewhat hard to comprehend, all the more so about _priority_ queues, but in the end that's, beside other things, what one would expect from modern implementation of thread pool
moreover, you, as a student loving algorithms and analysis, may like to dig into the lock-free algorithms in general
good luck
Hi Pavel, I have read a bit about lock-free data structures in Concurrency in Action by Anthony Williams. Depending on the frozen interfaces and the time on hand I will most likely implement and do some performance tests for lock-free queues. Thank you, Dan