James Blakemore

James Blakemore was born and raised in Kansas, and earned his Ph.D in chemistry at Yale University in 2012. Subsequently, he served as a senior postdoctoral scholar in chemistry at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) before moving to the University of Kansas in 2016.

Dr. Blakemore originally chose to study chemistry because of the importance of this discipline in development of clean, low-carbon energy sources, and he has maintained interests in this area throughout his career in research and teaching. Along this line, Dr. Blakemore and his research group have focused a large portion of their efforts in recent years on the chemistry of the heavy elements. Uranium, the heaviest element that occurs naturally on earth in significant quantities, is one important target in these studies because of its importance as a nuclear fuel and challenges associated with its handling and conversion in the nuclear fuel cycle. Dr. Blakemore and his group also conduct research on the chemistry of carbon dioxide conversion with the KU Center for Environmentally Beneficial Catalysis.

Dr. Blakemore joined as an Honors Faculty Fellow in Spring 2024, and taught a first-year honors seminar, “Success, Failure, and Science,” in Fall 2023. His appointment as a fellow builds on his established efforts in undergraduate mentoring, which have included guiding undergraduates in writing of theses based on experimental work completed in his laboratory as well as supporting nominations to the Goldwater Scholarship and other opportunities.