James Eaves, Ph.D. Email & Phone Number

East Greenwich, Rhode Island, United States

Quebec, Canada

• Spearheaded the introduction and establishment of Digital Electricity™ in the Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) sector, reporting directly to the Chief Technology Officer (CTO).• Orchestrated the development and execution of comprehensive market entry and product development strategies, leading to a robust product-market fit.• Conducted in-depth collaborations with both customers and engineering teams to meticulously validate customer needs, assess the competitive landscape, and refine the product’s unique value proposition.• Successfully scaled revenue streams from inception to several million dollars.• Provided strategic direction to cross-functional teams, encompassing engineering, marketing, and sales departments, to ensure cohesive efforts toward initiative objectives.• Fostered strategic partnerships, negotiating mutually beneficial value propositions with key industry stakeholders to bolster market presence and operational scalability.• Established a strong thought leadership presence by authoring influential articles addressing the technical challenges within the CEA industry and proposing innovative solutions. These publications have not only augmented industry knowledge but also significantly elevated the brand’s authority and visibility in the market.

• Taught and developed MBA courses related to finance, venture capital, and the process of developing and commercializing new technology.• Conducted research related to the market potential of technologies including EVs and PHEVs, vertical farms, biofuels, battery storage, and machine learning.• Developed several federally funded research collaborations with professors from engineering, AI, and life sciences as well as public and private stakeholders.• Created Startup Fuze, a one-month product development crash course described in the media as one of Quebec’s most important.• Co-created La Ruche Académie, the first startup lab / crowdfunding event for entrepreneurs in Quebec.• Contributed to most community initiatives to promote the startup ecosystem (including pitch competitions and entrepreneurial finance workshops).

• Led the R&D team and implemented a comprehensive innovation program for identifying opportunities, evaluating their value, and ranking them.• Implemented innovation initiatives that resulted in outcomes like increasing yields by 40%, improving operational efficiency and capacity utilization.• Developed and managed research collaborations with geneticists, plant scientists, and robotics academics.• Established a strong thought leadership presence by authoring influential articles addressing the technical challenges within the cannabis industry and proposing innovative solutions.

Quebec, Canada

La Ruche Quebec is the most active crowd-funding platform in Quebec. The organization has helped people raise millions of dollars each year for startups. The platform's success rate is three-times as high as Kickstarter's, partly because of the SM40, which is a group of 60 leaders from across Quebec who mentor the people who launch campaigns.

Quebec, Canada

Quebec City

StartupFuze is a one-month bootcamp for people who want to develop and build highly impactful products. The bootcamp is based on Design Thinking and Lean Product Management principles, and it emphasizes using storytelling tactics and beautiful presentations as a means of building support for a venture. The program has received media coverage from outlets across the world and was described as one of the most innovative startup programs in Quebec.

Davis, Ca

• Worked in the office of the Vice Dean of Education to design and implement machine learning methods for predicting student outcomes and evaluate learning initiatives.

Quebec City

Théâtre des Fonds de Tiroirs is the experimental theatre directed by Frédéric DuBois, a renowned director in Canada and the Director of the french section of Canada's National Theatre.

Quebec City

PetalMD was a SeriesA startup and Canada's fasting growing online network for doctors. PetalMD's platform saves doctors time by making it easier for them to manage their schedules, communication, collaboration, and billing. I led the design and managed the development and deployment of PetalMD's Social Learning System - a product that was adopted by thousands of doctors.(Agile Product Management, Design Thinking, Customer Development, Conversion Optimization, UX)

Mountain View, California

We patented a method of using social connections to do for images what PageRank does for webpages. It dramatically improved image discovery, but ultimately we couldn't monetize it sufficiently. -Our team designed a marketing strategy that allowed us to reach over 800k users.-Used design thinking methods to design and implement new features that enabled consistent increases in engagement over a 12 month period.-Cleaned and analyzed log data to uncover opportunities for new features.-Defined and monitored KPIs to enable continuous improvements to the user experience and engagement.-Created and delivered high effective pitches for both raising money and building community awareness.

Research projects included:-comparing the ROI of different integrated pest management (IPM) strategies;-using option pricing models to protect farmers agains the risk of pest damage;-statistical models for analyzing and forecasting changes in commodity prices;I taught courses related to corporate finance and agriculture commodity markets.

My research focused on developing statistical models to analyze and predict the behaviour of traders and prices in agriculture commodity markets.

For various financial institutions (mostly on Wall Street):-Analyzed electricity trading markets and built valuation models for electricity contracts.-Evaluate the financial risk of portfolios (marketable and non-marketable assets);-Design and implement Value-at-Risk (VaR) model;-Value over-the-counter assets.

Exchanges are designed to aggregate private information of traders and share that information with the public (in the form of price). The rules and design of trading affect how well private information is harnessed and shared. I experimented with various machine learning methods to analyze how changes in market design impact how well an exchange harnesses information across traders.

Phd, Agriculture And Resource Economics

My dissertation applied machine learning methods to analyze and forecast the behaviour or prices and traders in commodity (corn, soybeans.

Ba, Economics

Education record