Jim Kukula

Email me at alumni dot princeton dot edu with the user name "kukula"! I'd appreciate hearing your response to the ideas here, suggestions on how to develop them further, pointers to resources, etc. Here's a bit of my background.

Roots

I was born in 1955, spent my formative years in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, then moved around a bit. For a couple of grade school years I lived in England, attending school at Stubbington House near Ascot, Berkshire. I started high school at Lake Forest High School in Lake Forest, Illinois, and finished at Homestead Jr. Sr. High School in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Physics

I studied physics in college, receiving the A.B. degree summa cum laude from Princeton University and the M.S. degree from the University of Pennsylvania. My research work was mainly the theoretical study of phase transitions, renormalization groups, and the topology of defects.

Digital Systems

My professional career has been in developing computer systems to help digital hardware engineers. I have developed interactive schematic editors, design databases, simulators, state encoding algorithms, and a variety of Binary Decision Diagram applications such as formal equivalence checking. I have also developed parallel computer hardware and an object-oriented operating system to manage applications running on such hardware. I started my career at IBM, then continued at Synopsys in Hillsboro, Oregon. I also spent a year as a Visiting Scientist at MIT while working at IBM.

Here's a resume that gives more details on my digital systems career.

Buddhism

My main teacher has been Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche, the abbot at Karma Triyana Dharmachakra in Woodstock, New York. My most intensive involvement was my participation in the three year retreat led by Khenpo Rinpoche at Karme Ling. I have also benefitted greatly from the teachings and inspiration of other great teachers in the Kagyu lineage and the other lineages of Tibetan Buddhism. The Zen Mountain Monastery in Mount Tremper, New York, and its abbot John Daido Loori, very kindly gave me an opportunity to experience and learn from the Zen tradition.

Yoga

My discovery of the Iyengar school of Yoga originally opened my experience up to the world beyond the Cartesian mind/body split. My main Yoga teachers have been Joan White and Patricia Walden.

Miscellany

Some photos
Some inventions
Sri Yantra as a Java applet.
Computer-generated microtonal music.