Dr. Cale earned his bachelor of science in electrical engineering from the Missouri University of Science and Technology, graduating summa cum laude. He then earned his doctorate in electrical engineering from Purdue University (West Lafayette Campus), where he was part of the Energy Sources and Systems Group under major advisor Prof. Scott Sudhoff (Fellow, IEEE). His research was funded under a National Science Foundation IGERT fellowship and the Office of Naval Research. His dissertation was on computationally efficient magnetic modeling and material characterization methods for automated ferrimagnetic component designs.

After graduate school, James worked in industry for ten years before returning to academia, including lead and principal engineering positions at Orbital ATK (now Northrup Grumman), Advanced Energy Industries, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). At Advanced Energy, he designed control algorithms and hardware-in-the-loop platforms for utility-scale solar inverters. At NREL, he led the Distributed Energy Systems Integration Group.  In 2022-2023 he served as Chief Technology Officer at Moser Energy Systems.

Dr. Cale is currently an Associate Professor in the Systems Engineering Department at Colorado State University, with joint appointment in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. He also currently serves as Chief Technical Advisor at Moser Energy Systems. His research focuses on energy conversion, power-electronics, finite-inertia power systems, computational and applied electromagnetics, electromechanical device optimization, microgrids, hardware-in-the-loop, and machine learning algorithms for power applications.