Bio

James Mickens is a researcher in the Distributed Systems group at Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington. His research focuses on cloud-scale storage systems, and client-side JavaScript frameworks that improve the performance, robustness, and security of web applications. James received his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Michigan, and a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Georgia Tech. While at MIT, James will be hosted by Frans Kaashoek from the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

During his stay at MIT, James tentatively plans to make everything better for everyone on Earth. His approach will be cross-disciplinary and thus NSF-friendly. After solving all problems, James will write a children’s book, which explains the bad old days when perpetual motion machines did not exist, and bicycles did not spontaneously transform into helmets when crashes were imminent. James will write this book from his vacation home near Alpha Centauri, because James will have un-problematized the problem of interstellar space travel, mainly using Mickens Diagrams, which are similar to Feynman Diagrams, but less constrained by reality.

Video

Monitorama PDX 2014 - James Mickens - Computers are a Sadness, I am the Cure from Monitorama.

At MIT

Straight talk about race in academia, MIT News, 8 December 2020

#BlackInTheIvory: Academia’s Role in Institutional Racism, MIT Communications Forum and Radius at MIT, 3 December 2020