"I come from a state that raises corn and cotton and cockleburrs and democrats and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me." -- Willard Vandiver, to the 1899 U. S. Congress

I was raised in small-town Missouri (Viburnum, pop. 743).

I was always interested in how things work. Once my mother's pre-school meeting was disrupted by fireworks when the wires crossed on the doorbell I was putting together when I was 7. When I was 9, my parents invested in a TI 99/4A, my first entry into the world of computing.  We purchased the deluxe model, with 16K of RAM (twice the base configuration).

A couple years later we embarked on another activity that has become a long-term pleasure: Hiking. We walked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon when I was 11 and my sister was 8. A later family vacation took us to the top of Pike's Peak (14,110 ft.)

We upgraded our computer to an IBM PC XT, which I used in science projects beginning in 8th grade. Loosely based on a PC Magazine article, I wired up an interface between the XT and a radio-controlled tank. Using the computer to make something work in the real world was fascinating to me. When I was in high school, I made a prototype for a fire-fighting robot for mines, and took it and a line-following vehicle (the tank again!) to the International Science and Engineering Fair.

     When I looked for a good engineering school, I found Rice University in Houston TX. While there, I became active in InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. Rice was generous in allowing me to pursue research, which I have always enjoyed; for my senior research project, I worked on a prosthetic hand for amputees.

After I graduated, I stayed in Houston and went to work for Compaq, designing hard drive controllers (RAID adapters). After four years there, I decided to return to Rice. At the turn of the millennium I began graduate school, researching 3rd generation cell-phone technology in the wireless communications group.  After receiving a Master's degree from Rice, I moved to Clemson University to pursue a Ph.D. in robotics in the electrical engineering department.  I graduated in August, 2005 and moved to Mississippi State University to begin my career as a assistant professor.

I ride my Cannondale road bike to school and work on various research projects, still trying to use computers to make things work in the real world.