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James Weaver

  • Associate Professor
  • Joint appointment with Materials Science and Engineering, Cornell Engineering

Department

Academic Research Areas

  • Architectural design
  • Architectural technology
  • Collaborative practice
  • Digital media
  • Interdisciplinary art
  • Photography
  • Public art
  • Sculpture
  • Structures in architecture
  • Sustainability
  • Technology and art
  • Visual representation
  • Biologically inspired materials, architecture, and design
  • Advanced manufacturing and 3D data visualization
  • Multiscale imaging and materials characterization

James C. Weaver runs the Wide-Field Electron Optics Laboratory and leads the Biologically Inspired Materials and Design Group. Working at the interface between zoology, materials science, biomedical engineering, and multimaterial 3D printing, his main research interests focus on investigating structure-function relationships in hierarchically ordered biological composites and the advanced fabrication of their synthetic analogues. He has played critical roles in the development of new model systems for the study of a wide range of biomineralization processes. He is an internationally recognized and award-winning scanning electron microscopist. With a strong history of national and international academic and industrial collaborations, he has coauthored more than 150 journal articles in the biological, physical, and geological sciences. His work has been featured on the covers of more than 40 scientific journals, and he has contributed to numerous collaborative art installations, which have been exhibited in Berlin, Boston, Frankfurt, London, New York, Paris, and San Francisco.

Weaver’s position at Cornell is a joint appointment in the multicollege department of Design Tech and Cornell Engineering’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

Headshot of James Weaver

Academic Research Areas

  • Architectural design
  • Architectural technology
  • Collaborative practice
  • Digital media
  • Interdisciplinary art
  • Photography
  • Public art
  • Sculpture
  • Structures in architecture
  • Sustainability
  • Technology and art
  • Visual representation
  • Biologically inspired materials, architecture, and design
  • Advanced manufacturing and 3D data visualization
  • Multiscale imaging and materials characterization

Publications

  • Design and Fabrication of a Parasite-Inspired, Millimeter-Scale Tissue Anchoring Mechanism

    Maquignaz, Guillaume, Rebecca Zoll, Michael Karpelson, James C. Weaver, and Robert J. Wood. 2024. PNAS Nexus 3 (12).

  • High-Throughput Segmentation, Data Visualization, and Analysis of Sea Star Skeletal Networks

    Tomholt, Laura, Dominic Baum, Robert J. Wood, and James C. Weaver. 2023. Journal of Structural Biology 215 (2).

  • Mechanical and Hydrodynamic Analyses of Helical Strake-like Ridges in a Glass Sponge

    Fernandes, Mariana C., Mahya Saadat, Pierre Cauchy-Dubois, Chihiro Inamura, Tali Sirota, Grace Milliron, Hamid Haj-Hariri, Katia Bertoldi, and James C. Weaver. 2021. Journal of the Royal Society Interface 18 (182).