Jess received a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1984, and a Ph.D. in Polymer Science from the University of Akron in 1994. He worked at the Research Triangle Institute and Becton Dickinson Research Center in RTP, NC from 1985 to 1990. After finishing his graduate studies in 1995, he worked at the NASA-JSC White Sands Test Facility (WSTF) in Las Cruces, NM until 2022. Jess currently is an Associate Professor of Practice at NMSU in a role involving teaching, service, and R&D. His work focuses on investigating the compatibility and performance of materials in aerospace media and environments, nondestructive evaluation (NDE), testing, voluntary consensus standards development, and additive manufacturing. He is an author or co-author of over 100 publications, 2 patents, and is the technical point of contact for seven ASTM standards mostly related to NDE. He is a member of AIAA, ASNT, ASME, ASEE, and ASTM Committees D11 (rubbers), D20 (plastics), D30 (composites), E07 (NDE), F42 (Additive Manufacturing) and G04 (Oxygen Sensitivity of Matls). He also co-chaired the ANSI/America Makes Additive Manufacturing Standardization Collaborative (AMSC) NDE Working Group, culminating in the issuance of a revised list for NDE-related gaps in Version 3.0 of the AMSC Roadmap released in July 2023.