I graduated from Ohio State University with a Ph.D. in Computer Science in March 1989. My major was artificial intelligence and my minor was computer graphics and cognitive science. I also earned a M.S. from Ohio State University in Computer Science and a B.S. in Biochemistry.

Since then I have been at Michigan State University in various roles. Currently I am the Director of the MSU High Performance Computing Center , and have been since 2006.. My current research interests are Evolutionary Computation, especially Genetic Algorithms and Genetic Programming, and Data Mining.

I am also the author of The Practice of Computing Using Python , 2nd Edition (Python 3) with my co author Rich Enbody