James A. Jones is an Associate Professor at the University of California Irvine. Professor Jones is perhaps best known for the creation of the influential Tarantula technique that spawned a new field of “spectra-based” fault localization. For this work, he was awarded the prestigious ACM SIGSOFT Award in 2015. Also, he is a recipient of the prestigious National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, which recognizes outstanding research and excellent education. Jones’s research contributions span the duration of his undergrad, professional, graduate, and professorial career. Throughout this time, Jones created tools and techniques for software analysis (static and dynamic), techniques to help manage test suites for safety-critical software systems, techniques to support several aspects of software debugging and comprehension, and has studied the ways that software behaves in order to better model and predict it. Jones received the Ph.D. in Computer Science at Georgia Tech, advised by Professor Mary Jean Harrold. At UC Irvine, Jones leads the Spider Lab and advises Ph.D., Masters, and undergraduate students to study and improve software development and maintenance processes. Jones is a regular author and reviewer for top-tier research conferences (e.g., ICSE, FSE, ISSTA, ASE) and has co-organized events such as the 1st Working Conference on Software Visualization (VISSOFT) and the 10th Workshop on Dynamic Analysis (WODA).

Education
  • Ph.D., Computer Science, 2008

    Georgia Institute of Technology

  • B.S., Computer Science, Summa Cum Laude, 1996

    The Ohio State University