About

Hi, I’m Jim.

I’m an Assistant Professor of Physics at the United States Naval Academy, specializing in General Relativity, Differential Geometry, and High-Performance Computing.

As an applied theorist, my research bridges the gap between abstract geometric structures and the rigorous demands of real-time signal analysis. While my primary focus is on gravitational wave astronomy, I am broadly interested in how the tools of mathematical physics, specifically principal bundles and differential forms, can be leveraged to solve practical engineering problems in noise characterization.

Background

The through-line of my career has been a fascination with geometry, not just as a mathematical tool, but as the fundamental language of physical law.

This interest began during my time as a midshipman at the United States Naval Academy, the institution I have since returned to as faculty. While the Academy instilled in me a respect for mission-driven engineering, I found myself drawn to the theoretical machinery underneath. Mentorship under Prof. Christopher Morgan introduced me to the study of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) and gravitational lensing; a remarkable geometric connection between gravitation and light.

Realising that my contribution to the mission would come from a lab, I transferred to UT Austin to pursue physics in depth, pivoting to pure physics and mathematics. There, I immersed myself in the study of dynamical systems and the geometry of phase space, furthering the understanding of dynamics as geometry.

Prior to my doctoral studies, I spent several years as a quantitative developer at HBK Capital Management. This period was essentially an apprenticeship in software architecture, where I designed low-latency, distributed C++/Python systems and learned that elegant theory requires robust implementation. I also found another powerful application of geometric methods to model interest rate curves and associated evolution of internal states, using techniques like Kalman filters.

Current Work

After completing my doctorate at Penn State, I returned to the United States Naval Academy, this time as faculty, bringing that industrial rigor to bear on fundamental questions in gravity. My work combines the precision of differential geometry with the robustness of software engineering in the study of the universe. I currently work on a variety of astrophysical searches using signal processing methods, and continue to find new applications of geometry to improve these techniques.

The methods I develop for adapting to nonstationary noise carry over well beyond gravitational-wave astronomy. The same tools for tracking a drifting noise floor apply to acoustics, and in particular to naval applications such as sonar and underwater signal detection, where the ambient environment is likewise nonstationary.

Often, I find myself venturing into pure mathematical subjects motivated by physical applications, including commutative algebras and information geometry. To foster this interdisciplinary dialogue, I co-founded the Mathematical Aspects of Physics (MAP) seminar at Penn State, a series designed to connect the Math and Physics departments and explore the deep structures underlying our physical theories.

For more details on my research, see the Research page.