James Vernon Scotti born 1960) is an American astronomer. He was born in Bandon, Oregon and graduated from Woodway Senior High in Edmonds, Washington in 1978. He received his B.Sc. in Astronomy from the University of Arizona in Tucson in 1983. Ever since that time, he has worked on the Spacewatch project, which is one of a number of projects that look for near-Earth asteroids NEAs) He wrote the first automatic asteroid detection software for the project in 1984.1]