Roie Black is a Professor of Computer Science at Austin Community College in Austin, Texas. He is also the founder and principle consultant of SK Consulting Services. He has been involved in a wide range of computer technologies during a career that spans over 30 years.

After graduating from Virginia Tech with degrees in Aerospace Engineering, Roie entered active duty as an officer in the United States Air Force. His professional career began as a research engineer at the Wright Patterson Air Force Base research laboratories in Dayton, Ohio. He spent several years conducting research in the emerging field of Computational Fluid Dynamics. During this time, he developed programs for analyzing the flow of air over high-speed vehicles similar in design to the Space Shuttle. He also had an opportunity to develop software for use on the most powerful computers available at the time - including the new Cray-1 Supercomputer system.

He next was invited to serve on the faculty of the Air Force Institute of Technology, teaching software engineering, formal language theory, advanced numerical analysis techniques, and a wide range of introductory courses designed to help people make better use of the computer systems they worked with. Roie served on the technical evaluation teams that developed the new Ada programming language, and conducted a number of research projects with his graduate students on developing techniques for compiling Ada.

Roie was next assigned as a staff officer at Strategic Air Command Headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska. During this assignment he supervised the development and production of software for the Air Force Intercontinental Ballistic Missile fleet, managed software development for National-Level assessments of the new B-2 "Stealth Bomber" system, and served as technical lead for the installation of an advanced highly secure network system to support Strategic Air Command operations.

Roie's last assignment in the Air Force involved managing state-of-the-art high performance computational systems and their supporting staff. He was assigned as Deputy Director of the USAF Phillips Laboratory Supercomputer Center, which provided support to over 2000 Air Force research scientists and engineers. His duties included managing the operations of a $70 million Cray-2 Supercomputer center, and the operations of remote sites in California, Florida, and Hawaii. He served as acting Director of the center for over a year, and served on a Congressional-Level panel that developed a long range plan for supercomputer support for the Department of Defense.

Roie retired from active duty in 1993, after proudly serving his country for 20 years.

Since his retirement, Roie has concentrated on helping non-profit organizations and small businesses find ways to improve their operations through intelligent use of computer technologies. He founded the SK Consulting Services company to conduct that work. He also served as Director of Information Technologies for the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska. He moved to Austin, Texas in 1999. Roie just finished a second master's degree, this time in Computer Science at Texas State University. He is currently a Professor of Computer Science at Austin Community College.

When he is not working (not often enough, it seems), Roie enjoys spending time with his wife, building airplanes - both electric powered models, and full sized light aircraft, reading Science Fiction, and conducting a number of personal research projects. Here is his current building project - a Zenith Zodiac XL: