His research interests include software bug prediction, software evolution, code generation techniques, level design of computer games, and procedural generation of game content. He is the Program Co-Chair of the 2010 Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR 2010), and is part of the steering committee for the Foundations of Digital Games conference series. From 1995-1999 Jim led the development of the WebDAV protocol for web-based content authoring. He received his PhD in Information and Computer Science from Univ. of California, Irvine in 2000 under his advisor, Richard N. Taylor.