Eric was born in northern California in 1970. He lived in the California towns of Sacramento, Chico, and Redding while growing up. He was valedictorian and voted "Most likely to update Webster's Dictionary" at Enterprise High School in Redding. Eric was a cadet officer in the Civil Air Patrol, learing about aviation and basic search and rescue techniques. He has worked in an RV park in the Sangre De Cristo mountains of northern New Mexico and has been a bank teller in Sacramento. He came to San Diego in 1988 for undergraduate work in mechanical engineering at the University of California, San Diego. Upon graduating summa cum laude with membership in Phi Beta Kappa and Tau Beta Pi, Eric began graduate work at the Center for Magnetic Recording Research in the field of head/tape interface. This area requires knowledge of fluid and solid mechanics as well as numeric analysis, all of which were of interest to him. His research to date has involved new interferometry techniques to evaluate head/tape contact, and future plans include writing a two dimensional finite element based head/tape simulation program. His publications to date are:
Eric passed his qualifying exam on June 14, 1995, thus earning the Master of Science degree. His expected completion date for the Ph.D. is the summer of 1997.
Away from the lab, Eric is a voracious reader with an interest in the history of technology and who also likes science fiction (lately, the Babylon 5 TV series) and classic rock music (favorite band: The Who). He never misses The Simpsons or ER. He also studies hand-to-hand combat where he is a green belt in the Universal Fighting Arts system. He has also been known to spend more than a few hours playing computer games. He was learning to skydive along with Robin Swain and Tom McMillan. Check out Eric's links or Geek Code.
About the background: This is a fringe pattern from the head/tape contact on a cylindrical head without slots.
Last updated April 9, 1998.
