• About AgustaWestland

Mr. James J. Thomas is an American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow and Laboratory Fellow at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) with over 35 years of experience. He is being honored for his leadership in establishing the growing science of visual analytics and associated technology to aid in detecting, predicting, preventing and responding to acts of terrorism and other catastrophic threats.

Mr. Thomas is founder and past Director of the Department of Homeland Security National Visualization and Analytics Center. His responsibilities at PNNL include establishing investment directions for Information and Computing Technology (ICT), representing ICT in and outside PNNL, leading major technology initiatives, mentoring staff, and being a Principal Investigator on several major science programs. He has a broad working knowledge of information technology, but specializes in the research, design, and implementation of innovative information and scientific and analytic visualization, multimedia, and human computer interaction technologies. Recently developed technologies set a new stage for visualization of masses of multimedia information sources.

Mr. Thomas has numerous patents and extensive publications, with several publications being widely referenced and re-printed. More recently he has led teams in text, numerical, image, and video analysis for massive information spaces. He has received several international science awards including "Top 100 Scientific Innovators" (Science Digest), two R&D 100 awards (1986 and 1996) presented annually for the 100 most technologically significant products and advancements, and two Federal Laboratory Consortium Technology Transfer Awards (1989 and 1999) for innovation in transferring research technology to industry and universities.

Mr. Thomas holds a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from Eastern Washington University and a Master of Computer Science from Washington State University.