James R. Fienup received an AB in physics and mathematics from Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts and MS and Ph.D. (1975) degrees in applied physics from Stanford University, where he was a National Science Foundation graduate fellow. He performed research for 27 years at the Environmental Research Institute of Michigan and Veridian Systems, where he was a senior scientist. He joined the faculty at the University of Rochester in 2002 as the Robert E. Hopkins Professor of Optics.

Professor Fienup is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, is a Fellow of OSA and SPIE, and is a senior member of IEEE. He was awarded the Rudolf Kingslake Medal and Prize in 1979 by SPIE, the International Prize in Optics in 1983 by the International Commission for Optics, the Emmett N. Leith Medal by OSA in 2013, and became a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2012. He was a distinguished visiting scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2009 and editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Optical Society of America A, 1997-2003. He previously served as division editor of Applied Optics - Information Processing, and associate editor of Optics Letters.