Dr. Dorin Patru was born in Sibiu, Romania. He attended the local German school system through the 12th grade. He received both his BS and MS degrees in electrical engineering from the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca in Romania in 1993. From 1993 to 1995 he worked for the Institute for Design and Research of Automation Control and Test Equipment, located in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. In 1995 he joined the faculty at the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca as an Instructor and Research Assistant. In 1997 he received an assistantship for doctoral studies in the United States from Washington State University located in Pullman, WA. He received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering in the spring of 2002. His advisor was Dr. Scott R. Hudson and his thesis is entitled: “Application specific performance enhancements of digital and mixed-signal CMOS circuits using opto-electronic circuit techniques”. Upon graduation, Dr. Patru joined the faculty of the Electrical Engineering Department at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) as a tenure track Assistant Professor. He is currently teaching courses in the areas of: digital circuits and systems design, computer architecture and physical implementation of integrated circuits. Space exploration and in particular space related technologies have been his passion since his early childhood. Upon arrival at RIT, he began laying the ground work to advise a small group of senior level undergraduate students in the design of small satellites. RIT requires a capstone multidisciplinary senior design experience which provided Dr. Patru with an ideal avenue to realize these projects. The scope of the design projects quickly expanded when Dr. Patru realized that being able to launch the satellites into space in a cheap and timely manner would greatly increase the educational experience for the students. In the fall of 2003 Dr. Patru began researching the feasibility of building a small launch system for satellites weighing less than 1 kilogram. This research resulted in the genesis of the METEOR Project which stands for Microsystems Engineering Technology for the Exploration of Outer Space Regions.