James Colliander

James Ellis Colliander (born 22 June 1967) is an American-Canadian mathematician. He is currently Professor of Mathematics at University of British Columbia and served as Director of the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences (PIMS) during 2016-2021. He was born in El Paso, Texas, and lived there until age 8 and then moved to Hastings, Minnesota. He graduated from Macalester College in 1989. He worked for two years at the United States Naval Research Laboratory on fiber optic sensors and then went to graduate school to study mathematics. He received his PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1997 and was advised by Jean Bourgain. Colliander was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley and spent semesters at the University of Chicago, the Institute for Advanced Study and the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute.

He is also an award-winning teacher.