James Howard (mathematician)

James P. Howard II,  is an American mathematician and data scientist, where he works as a data scientist and statistician.

Early life
Howard was born in Dayton, Ohio and attended schools in southwest Ohio. He studied mathematics at the University of Maryland, College Park, environmental science at the Johns Hopkins University, and public policy at the University of Baltimore. He earned his doctorate in 2014 in public policy from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. His research focused on the economic costs of the National Flood Insurance Program.

Career
He is a scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory where his work focuses on data science. In addition, he has led research projects on blockchain, augmented reality, and public health. Howard also maintains the R package phonics for managing phonetic spellings in R.

Howard joined the Board of Appeals for Howard County in 2011, where he has taken part in several controversial land use decisions. In addition, Howard has been a member of the Maryland Defense Force since 2006, where he has served as information management chief. He also served as a member of the Howard County Charter Review Commission in 2019 recommending changes to make redistricting independent and insulate decisions from political influence. Howard ran for the Maryland House of Delegates in 2018 and ran for delegate to the 2020 Democratic National Convention pledged to Elizabeth Warren.

Professional

 * Fellow of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, 2022
 * Fellow of the Cybernetics Society, 2021
 * Senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 2021
 * Fellow of the British Computer Society, 2020

Books

 * Teaching and Learning Mathematics Online, co-edited with John F. Beyers, CRC Press, New York, 2020, ISBN 9781351245586
 * Handbook of Military and Defense Operations Research, co-edited with Natalie M. Scala, CRC Press, New York, 2020, ISBN 9780429467219
 * Computational Methods for Numerical Analysis with R, CRC Press, New York, 2017, ISBN 9781498723633
 * Socioeconomic Effects of the National Flood Insurance Program, Springer, Cham, Switzerland, 2016, ISBN 9783319290621

Game credits

 * Designer, GURPS Disasters: Hurricane, Steve Jackson Games, 2019