First a bit of personal background:
While BS is in M&AE from CU,
hobby and professional experiences revolved around tinkering with computers

Kept ending up in systems engineering roles: hence enrollment at ISR to figure out what the heck an SE does
First job during tech bubble: supercomputing cluster architect – much thought on distributed redundant network topologies that shaped my approach to design and problem solving
Moved on to Boeing ATM to bring the information age to ATC operations

First class at UMCP: ENCE667 w/ Steve Gabriel: introduced computational methodology for OR
Intrigued by ability to formulate problems in such a way that computers could return meaningful results
Used to generate first attempt at aircraft transit scheduler

This project constitutes a desperate attempt to weave the various threads of my life into a coherent story. Here goes...