James works for NASA Ames as an Systems Engineer in the Advanced Aerospace Materials and Devices group. He leads several projects to develop embedded hardware for reusable launch vehicles and the next generation crew exploration vehicle. This work involves developing and debugging microcontroller-based data acquisition modules and miniature wireless sensors, including circuit board design, firmware, testing and failure analysis.

Recently, James built a novel rocket engine monitoring system. This payload first flew onboard a Garvey Spacecraft Corp. P-8A rocket in Mojave, CA and includes engine/tank pressure transducers and accelerometers. The engine monitoring system is an advanced concept demonstrator for a wireless 802.15.4 databus to replace the standard MIL-STD-1553 spacecraft bus in situations where stage-seperation makes traditional bus architectures difficult.

In 2004, James co-founded Thermo-Sentry Electronics with the aim of producing embedded sensor systems, capably of interfacing with PDAs and smart phones. Thermo-Sentry worked closely with the Product Realization Lab. at Stanford to produce a low power Temp/Humidity datalogger for long duration environmental monitoring.

Prior to joining NASA, James worked for Intel in Oregon on stress-induced leakage currents in high-field MOS capacitors. During college he interned with the National Microelectronics Research Center, working on accelerated lifetime testing for high-voltage transistors

He received a BE degree in Electrical Engineering from University College Cork, Ireland, with an emphasis on power electronics. James received a MS and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford's Center for Integrated Systems, where he held an SRC fellowship . While at Stanford he patented a conductance modulation mechanism for carbon nanotubes under high electric fields.

James is passionate about entrepreneurial and engineering initiatives that produce widespread benefit to society. He is involved in NASA student outreach programs, including the amateur robotics program Botball. He attends meeting of the Stanford BASES society and the Bay Area Mensa chapter. In his spare time James enjoys working on old Porsches and is an accomplished marathon runner (Boston '03, '04 and '06).

Email: James.T.OKeeffe@nasa.gov