About Me
Hi! I am James Thomas.
I am a software engineer with over two decades of experience, an MS Artificial Intelligence candidate at the University of Texas at Austin, and a BA in Physics from Arizona State University.
If you browse this site, you might find an article on Software Architecture sitting right next to some thoughts on Emergent Gravity. To some those things seem like they belong in different blogs but to me, it is the same discipline.
I believe that Engineering is just Applied Physics. Whether I am optimizing a CUDA kernel for high-performance computing or designing a PID loop for a robotic arm, the fundamental challenge is the same: understanding the state of a system, predicting its evolution, optimizing the feedback loops, and then validating the results.
Background
I started in Physics, where I learned to see the world through the lens of Calculus and Hamiltonian mechanics but I have always enjoyed simulating the world instead of just describing it; I wanted to build things. My research tends to focus on the area where software and hardware meet.
I have spent two decades as a software engineer professionally working at all levels of the stack. Now, through my graduate work in AI, I am circling back to the questions that drew me to Physics in the first place: how intelligent agents build, maintain, and act on models of the real world.
My work sits at the intersection of:
Embodied AI & Sim-to-Real Transfer: Exploring the gap where perfect code meets an imperfect world: entropy, noise, and friction.
Systems Architecture: Building robust software that tames complex environments and is built to evolve with them.
Autonomous Decision-Making: Designing agents that plan and adapt under uncertainty, not just follow scripts.
Jaybird Labs
Jaybird Labs is my research sandbox. It's a place where I can prototype ideas through a strict development pipeline: Visualize the math, Simulate under physics-accurate conditions, then Validate against real hardware. If you are interested in the interactive side of this work, that is where it lives.
Why "JamesThomas.dev"?
This site is the long-form counterpart. I write here to clarify my own thinking. If it helps you clarify yours, then the system is working.