James Devine
Senior Software Engineer
About
James Devine joined Microsoft research in June 2020 to work with Steve Hodges (opens in new tab) on democratising hardware prototyping and production. He has already has a strong record in democratising access to technology through his PhD research.
During his PhD, he developed the device runtime for the BBC micro:bit (opens in new tab). This device runtime was generalised and now underpins Microsoft MakeCode (opens in new tab), a first class computer science platform that has been used to educate an estimated 20 million children around the world. Later in his PhD James turned his attention to hardware composition and developed JACDAC (opens in new tab), a brand new protocol for connecting peripherals and microcontrollers. JACDAC is now an active project within Microsoft Research and will be part of many project roadmaps to come.
James’ experience lies in designing software and protocols that create intuitive experiences for everyone, whilst carefully balancing this with efficiency. The end result is usually technologies that are more accessible to all. He hopes to apply this approach to his new and exciting research direction of democratising hardware prototyping and production.