James R. Valcourt is pursuing a Ph.D. in systems biology at Harvard University. As a former researcher at D. E. Shaw Research in New York City, he used supercomputer simulations to study pharmaceutical drugs. He is a recipient of the quarter-million-dollar Hertz Foundation Graduate Fellowship, and graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University with an A.B. in molecular biology, receiving the Pyne Prize. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.