Jim has been programming since microcomputers came out in the early 1980's. His early work was primarily in the field of paint and animation software and included Zoetrope and the Autodesk Animator. He always had a strong interest in biology as well. In 1996 when the Microsoft Windows Software Development Kit expanded to take up 12 CD-ROMs, Jim decided it was time for a change. He went back to school and got a PhD in biology. In the course of his graduate work he did the first assembly of the human genome, and developed a genome analysis web site, genome.ucsc.edu, that gets over a hundred thousand hits from thousands of scientists every day. Jim is currently a research scientist at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

For more information, visit http://www.cse.ucsc.edu/~kent/