James Freericks is passionate about making quantum mechanics more widely accessible in order to prepare more students for the second quantum revolution. Indeed, he believes everyone can become a quantum mechanic! Educated at Princeton University (1985) and the University of California, Berkeley (1987, 1991), he held postdoctoral fellowships at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara and at the University of California, Davis before moving to Georgetown University in 1994. He is a fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Physical Society and has won awards from the Alpha Sigma Nu Society, the Office of Naval Research, edX, and Georgetown University. He is currently Professor and McDevitt Chair in the Department of Physics.

His research has spanned the fields of superconductivity, transport in strongly correlated materials, ultracold atoms in optical lattices, dynamical mean-field theory, ion-trap-based quantum simulation, nonequilibrium many-body physics, mathematical physics, quantum computing, quantum chemistry, and quantum pedagogy. He volunteers by offering three classes annually on edX in mathematical methods and quantum mechanics. He has served as the Secretary-Treasurer and as the Councillor for the Division of Computational Physics at the American Physical Society and as the Treasurer of the American Association of Physics Teachers.