Michael Barr holds BS and MS degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Maryland. He was editor-in-chief of the magazine for over three and a half years. Prior to joining the magazine as technical editor, Michael spent half a decade developing embedded software--a field to which he has since returned. He is the author of the books Programming Embedded Systems: With C and GNU Development Tools, 2nd Edition (O'Reilly & Associates) and the Embedded Systems Dictionary (CMP Books).