James A. TenCate earned the B.A. degree in physics and mathematics from Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI, in 1979, and went on to attend graduate school at The University of Texas at Austin, where he earned the M.S. degree in mechanical engineering in 1983, and the Ph.D. degree in 1992.As a research assistant in the Solid State Research Laboratory at Calvin College, he worked on measuring the electrical properties of liquid rare earth metals, notably Eu and Yb. In the two and a half years between the end of the Masters and beginning of the Ph.D. degrees he taught for the Physics department, Calvin College, as a visiting lecturer. After receivng the Ph.D. degree, he worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Applied Research Laboratories on problems in seismo-acoustics and nonlinear acoustics. He joined the staff at Los Alamos National Laboratory, GeoEngineering Group in 1994, where he is doing experimental research in nonlinear elasticity.
Dr. TenCate is a member of the Acoustical Society of America.