Rich Weyand is a computer consultant and digital forensic analyst. He was born in Illinois and lived there almost 60 years before he and his wife engineered an escape to the hills of southern Indiana in 2011. His undergraduate and graduate education is in Physics, and he's never really recovered. He has co-authored several legal books and articles on automated trade secret asset management, and is currently heading up the launch of a computer software start-up. In the five years since LC30, he has published twenty-five novels in four science fiction and fantasy series: the Childers Universe, the EMPIRE Series, the COLONY series, and the PANTHEON series.