James is an interdisciplinary scientist with over 20 years of research experience spanning biology, chemistry, physics, genetics, and medicine. He has published over 40 peer reviewed journal articles and has received research funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF), and several private foundations. James received a BS in Honors Physics from the University of Minnesota and a PhD in Biophysics and Computational Biology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was a prestigious Agouron Postdoctoral Fellow while at Caltech.