Hi 👋, I’m James Wade.
I’m a research scientist in a large chemicals R&D organization, where I build AI-powered developer tools and lead AI strategy for about three thousand researchers. Most of my work lives in the R and Python ecosystems—I build internal packages, ship Shiny apps to production, and maintain open source projects like gptstudio, shinymcp, and deputy. I also run our Citizen Data Science program, which helps bench scientists get more from their data.
Before all this, I was a bench chemist. I grew up in South Carolina and started my chemistry training at Furman University, a small liberal arts school in the upstate. That’s where I found analytical chemistry—working on the abiotic origins of life, transition metal synthesis, and drug-DNA interactions for anticancer therapeutics.
I did my graduate work at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in Ryan Bailey’s lab, building silicon photonic biosensors and microfluidic tools for cancer diagnostics and precision medicine.
I live in mid-Michigan with my wife and son. My wife is a veterinarian who brings home too many furry friends—the current menagerie is two dogs and five cats.