I started my University studies at The University of Kansas majoring in Trumpet Performance. I had every intent of becoming a jazz musician, but something happened along the way. A great deal of it was realizing what it meant to be a professional musician and realizing the danger of making your avocation your vocation. I ended up receiving the BSCS and BSEE degrees in 1986, continuing to perform in ensembles throughout my undergraduate studies.

From there I joined the Telecommunication and Information Sciences Lab (TISL) at KU working on the COEDS project, developing a CAD system for evaluating telecommunications system compatibility. During this project, I was exposed to two things that continue to play an important role in my research - functional programming and systems engineering. I received the MSEE degree in 1988 and the PhD in 1992, both under Dr. Gary Minden.

After completing my PhD, I left KU and Kansas, joining the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Cincinnati. While at UC I began to pursue interests in formal methods and automated software engineering. I founded and directed the Knowledge-Based Software Engineering Laboratory and worked on several DARPA and AFRL funded research projects. I also began integrating formal methods into undergraduate computer engineering courses, receiving some national attention for that effort.

After 7 great years at Cincinnati, I moved back to Kansas as an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and a principal investigator with the Information and Telecommunications Technology Center. In 2005 I was promoted to Professor. My interests in formal methods continued and with David Barton and Peter Ashenden, I developed the Rosetta systems-level specification language. I have found myself moving more into the areas of semantics and language design. I continue to work on projects funded by DARPA, NSF, NASA and AFRL.

Work on Rosetta continues with an IEEE standard in the works. I've published on book with Morgan Kaufman with plans for a second. I also find myself looking more at language interpreters and ways of mixing computational models during analysis activities as well as traditional analysis activities. I still love to teach and advise students and am completely addicted to the moment of discovery...