James Davenport is currently a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow working at Western Washington University. He received his PhD in Astronomy from the University of Washington in Seattle. Dr. Davenport's research centers around stellar flares, explosive events on the surface due to strong and tangled magnetic fields, and how the rate of these flares decreases as the stars age. He has written research articles on a wide range of topics, from SETI to binary star systems.

Since 2012, Davenport has been the author of the data, science, and visualization blog IfWeAssume.com, which has featured popular articles such as The United States of Starbucks, 24 Hours of King County Metro, and Airports of the World. He has been a frequent speaker in Seattle and around the country on the topic of data visualization and presentation.