About James
James is a physicist and programmer active in Ithaca NY and Boston/Cambridge MA. He is currently working on his PhD as a graduate student in the Department of Physics at Cornell. He graduated from Northeastern University with his BS in Physics in 2014.
Physics
James is focusing his studies in the field of Accelerator Physics as a graduate student in the SRF group. Recent work includes research into the field-dependent decrease in the microwave surface resistance of impurity-doped niobium known as the “anti-Q-slope”, as well as work with other SRF materials such as Nb3Sn and niobium films produced by CVD and HiPIMS.
In 2013, as a Northeastern student, James worked at CERN upgrading the ME 1/1 chambers on the CMS detector. James also worked in other physics lab groups at Northeastern in 2010 and 2011, studying physics and medical applications of titanium dioxide nanotubes.
Programming
Outside of scientific programming, James specializes in web development, with attention to back-end programming and relational databases. He is most experienced in Ruby on Rails and Django, but he doesn’t want to tie himself to any framework in particular (just as a good builder doesn’t tie himself to one color of brick). James has worked as a technical consultant for Wrongcards and with a team of other programmers developed a new web application for the Biomod competition.
From 2011 to 2013, James worked as a staff programmer and web developer in the Wall Lab at Harvard Medical School (recently relocated to Stanford).
Et cetera
James also pursues several hobbies in his free time, particularly hiking and reading. Some of his favorite mountains are Moriah, Washington, and Bondcliff (all in the White Mountains of New Hampshire), and some of his favorite books are Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Mason and Dixon by Thomas Pynchon, and Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger.