RZRM: Short bio

Roger Z. Ríos

Short Bio

Roger was born on April 1966, in Monterrey, the capital of Nuevo León, and México's third largest city; and was brought up in San Nicolás de los Garza (San Nico for the folks), in Monterrey's northern border. He was the eldest of four children of Rogelio Ríos and Griselda Mercado. He has a sister, Azucena Yoloxóchitl, and two brothers, Netzahualcóyotl, and Fidel Itzcuauhtli.

Roger had a very happy childhood, attending public schools all the way from pre-kinder, and playing all kind of games and sports with the kids from the neighborhood. In particular, soccer, and football were his favorite ones. He was fortunate enough to start playing in official teams at age 10 so he got the discipline and daily practice benefits that came with the sports package. He also enjoyed working with children (as a teenager) once he become coach in both football and soccer teams.

It was math what would become his favorite subject at school. His affinity for mathematics started to show since the early years. In 1983, he won the Nuevo León state-wide Mathematics Contest that brought together the top high-school students in the state. This contest was organized by the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León (UANL) and the Sociedad Matemática Mexicana (Mexican Mathematical Society). The award gave him the right to represent the state of Nuevo León in the National Contest, held in Guanajuato. This was the first time that México was attempting to participate in the International Mathematics Olympiad. However, due to undisclosed reasons, the National Contest did not take place. The damage was done, though. He received the other part of the award: a set of books, a travel grant to attend the 1983 National Mathematics Conference, and a full scholarship to attend college.

From 1983 through 1987, he attended the Facultad de Ciencias Físico-Matemáticas (School of Physics and Mathematics) at UANL, in San Nico. He graduated with a Licenciatura (B.S. equivalent) degree in Mathematics on 1988. His Licenciatura thesis was the result of a research project at Vitro Tec, a research and development firm belonging to Vitro, México's leading enterprise in the glass industry, where he had started working on the Summer 1986.

He spent four years working at Vitro Tec, where he did some stuff with math and computers to try to simulate glass-forming processes. However, he got into some little trouble when the Coke glass bottles started to come out with the shape of Pepsi bottles. He also worked part-time as an instructor at Centro Galileo in Monterrey, teaching BASIC programming language to 8-15 year-old kids, and as an assistant instructor at UANL.

In 1991, he joined the Operations Research Program at the University of Texas at Austin. Probably the hardest part was to keep up with a long-distance romance; however, Roger and Ofelia passed the distance test and got married in San Nico in August 1992. In December of that year, Roger got his Master's degree, and Ofelia, who had remained in San Nico finishing up school, joined him in Austin, where Roger remained for the doctoral program.

In March 1996, Roger made his debut as a dad when the Austenite-disguised-as-a-Mexican boy Vandari Pavel was born. He finished up his doctoral work at UT-Austin in 1997, and then he and his family moved to Houston where he conducted his postdoctoral work as a visiting researcher in the High Performance Computing Center at the University of Houston and as a research associate in the Department of Industrial Engineering at Texas A&M University. During his tenure as a postdoc more damage was done. Roger and Ofelia had a beautiful Mexican-Houstonian girl named Aleida Shaní, born February 1999.

In 1999, Roger and family moved back to their beloved San Nico, after almost nine years of the great Texas adventure, very happy to be back in the developing world. He was the co-founder of the Graduate Program in Systems Engineering at UANL professor in the Systems Engineering Program at UANL back in 1999, where he has been a full professor ever since.

During his sabbatical leave in Barcelona, the fifth member of the Rios family was manufactured. Biali Joan was born in Monterrey in January 2007.


Revised: February 2007