I was born in Des Moines, Iowa during a record cold spell that might have been a vestige of the last ice age. Somewhat later I received the standard three degrees, all in electrical engineering, from Iowa State University. During graduate school I taught there, except for two years as a communications officer with the U. S. Navy in Japan, and several summers with what is now Rockwell International. After the Ph. D., I worked for Rockwell for two years full-time and then several summers, doing analyses of guidance and navigation systems.

For ten years, I taught undergraduate and graduate control and systems courses (and some computer systems) at the University of Missouri-Rolla, and did research for NASA on synchronization and detection for satellite telemetry. Then came five years with Hewlett-Packard in Colorado, defining I/O architecture and writing system software for the predecessors of the HP300 workstations, and also instrument software. During this time I was an elected city council member (asambleista) in Loveland, Colorado and also taught flying part-time. During the summers of 1968 and 1988 I worked for AT&T.

I came to UPRM in 1982; initially I taught control systems and communications, and then moved into software, which has really been a major interest all along, although I finished graduate school before formal computer science programs were offered. My primary research interests are in operating systems, distributed systems, and operating system and network security.
I retired from UPRM in September 2010.

I was originally licensed as an engineer in Missouri in 1971 and now hold licenses in Puerto Rico and Colorado. I am a member of ACM and a senior member of IEEE.

I have two children, both married, and 7 grandchildren. Shortly after coming to PR, I married Loreina Santos Silva, who taught in the Hispanic Studies department until retiring a few years ago. She is a published poet and critic, and is much more famous than I.