Alex James is a Full-professor of AI hardware at Digital University Kerala. He will be taking over as Controller of Examinations from Jan 2026 at Digital University Kerala, and also the IEEE CASS Board of Governors from 2026-28. He severed in multiple administrative roles including Dean Academics, Dean External Linkages and Projects, Associate Dean Academics, Associate Dean Research, Department Chair etc. His research scientific contributions are in the applied research and innovations in analog memristive computing, including practical realisations to protoypes and products. He is also a technology leader supporting the development of electronics and hardware ecosystem, help influence the growth of multiple startups, including creating multiple policies to shape investments and governance of intellectual property development through semicon program, graphene ecosystem, handware startups etc.
James received his PhD from Queensland Micro and Nanotechnology Centre, Griffith University, Australia in a short 2 year duration. He heads the Maker Village, one of the largest electronic hardware incubators in India with over 80 electronics startups. He heads the Centre for excellence in Intelligent IoT Sensors, and India Innovation Centre for Graphene. He is the founding director board member of India’s first Digital Science Park. He has spun out multiple startup companies from his research group; published more than 250 papers. For the last two decades, he worked in the areas of board design, signal integrity and mixed signal design in Industry and in the area of AI hardware and systems in academia. He has taught more than 60 courses, in the areas of chip design and AI.
He got the IEEE Kerala Section Best Researcher Award (2022), IEEE CASS Best Associate Editor for IEEE TCAS1 (2020-2021), Kerala State Higher Education Council Award 2022 Kairali Gaveshana Puraskaram from the Kerala government, 2024 IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems Guillemin-Cauer Best Paper Award, IEEE CASS Best Associate Editor for IEEE TBCAS (2024-2025) and Dr Satyajit Chakraborty Memorial Research Award 2026. First chair of IEEE CASS Kerala, which won the 2023 IEEE Circuits and Systems Regional Chapter-ofthe-Year Award: Region 10 and 2024 IEEE Circuits and Systems Global Chapter-of-the-Year Award. He is a member of SIG AgriFood and IEEE CASS Technical Committees on Neural Systems and Applications (NSA TC), Nonlinear Circuits and Systems Technical Committee (NCAS TC), Cellular Nanoscale Networks, and Memristor Array Computing (CNNMAC TC).
He is Associate Editor in Chief of IEEE Open Journal of Circuits and Systems (2024-2025) and Associate Editor of IEEE Access, Frontiers in Neuroscience, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems and IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Artificial Intelligence. He is currently IEEE CASS Board of Governor Member at Large (2026-28). He is an IET, BCS, and HEA Senior Fellow.