James Marks

Base

Full name	James Marks
Summary	Designing hardware sensors and software for entrepreneurs in the medical and industrial sectors for the Internet of Things
Type of researcher	Professor
Introduce yourself, your experience and your credentials	Hi I’m James Marks. I’m a faculty mentor faculty adviser here at Niagara Research and Innovation. When students are hired as research assistants my job is to help guide them in the right direction.
Describe your research	Students here do research involving IOT which means Internet of Things. For example, creating hardware sensor devices and the supporting software for it as well as communication devices for industries ranging from medical to manufacturing. One of our FedDev funded projects that we’re currently working on is with industry partners Studio One we are working with them to develop software for a medical device which is a blanket that takes place of current medical sensors for a more comfortable experience for patients in nursing homes, emergency rooms, and hospitals. Recently the vast majority of our projects have centered around these IOT Internet of Things devices which helps our industry partners to gather data about the world around us and about specifically their customers in order to provide a higher quality of service and to improve their overall performance.
Explain its significance	So devices can help our industry sponsors. In many ways in ways that you haven’t even dreamed of yet you can create devices to help control your facility, to reduce the cost of manpower, and to overall improve the quality of your workplace. From a consumers point of view IOT devices can solve all sorts of problems and improve quality of life and make lives easier. For example a device can see the earliest warning signs of something breaking down, give a warning call-out to a maintenance person, and have that problem solved without the interaction of the consumer in the first place. Or perhaps if there’s a carbon monoxide issue an IOT device could turn off the stove inside of a house to avoid carbon monoxide poisoning or stop a fire or anything along those lines.