James Black is a senior academic professional and serves as the director of student and academic affairs in the Office of Graduate Education. In his role as director, he supports a team that manages student services and success programs for Tech's more than 7,000 on-campus master's and doctoral students. These services and programs include Institute-level orientation and onboarding, graduate student hiring, fellowships administration, and thesis and dissertation processing. 

Before joining the Office of Graduate Education, he completed his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech doing research on a novel droplet levitation technique utilizing a fluid property called thermocapillarity.