James was born and raised in Rolla, Missouri, where he “studied” crawdads in the creek behind his house. He began his formal scientific training in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard, pursuing undergraduate research on affinity gel electrophoresis with Professor George Whitesides. James then completed his Ph.D. degree with Professor Stuart Schreiber, discovering peptide ligands for SH3 domains and the cellular target of the fungal metabolite myriocin. After becoming fascinated by developmental biology, James studied embryology at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole and combined his interest in organic chemistry and embryonic patterning by investigating the mechanism of cyclopamine, a cyclopia-inducing plant alkaloid, with Professor Philip Beachy at Johns Hopkins. Since joining the Department of Chemical and Systems Biology at Stanford in 2003, James has explored the crossroads of chemistry, developmental biology, and cancer biology. He is particularly interested in the molecular mechanisms that regulate tissue formation and regeneration, their contributions to human disease, new technologies for perturbing and observing these processes, and zebrafish and mouse models. James became the Chair of Chemical and Systems Biology in 2016, and he is the Faculty Lead of High-Throughput Screening for the Stanford Innovative Medicines Accelerator, Co-Director of the Molecular Pharmacology Training Program, and Director of the Scholarly Concentrations Program in the Molecular Basis of Medicine. Outside of the office and laboratory, James enjoys fly fishing for larger model organisms, trail running, and spending time with his wife, three kids, and two dogs on the ridge and coast of the Bay Area.