ASTL ENTERPRISES - Key Persons

Job Titles:

• Managing Member
• Principal Engineer

BS in Computer Science/Mathematics, 1978, Angelo State University, San Angelo, Texas. Post-graduate studies in Mathematics at Stanford University. Active software developer since 1977. Lewis enjoys running, cycling, swimming, cooking, music and reading and has one brother who works as a Design Engineer at Dell. His wife is a contract Web Developer and they have four adult children and one granddaughter. Since 1995, Lewis has called Austin (the "Live Music Capital of the World"), Texas home. When a contract dictates, a second home is established near the customer site. Background As is typical with Air Force families, much of his childhood was spent moving from one base to another, including 3 years in Frankfurt, Germany. The Lewis family also lived in Virginia, Massachusetts, and California before settling down in Ruston, Louisiana, where Lewis' father assumed the role of commander of the ROTC detachment at Louisiana Tech University before later retiring to teach engineering. Lewis was interested in mathematics and science and was an avid reader in high school, from which he graduated in three years, taking an early entrance to La. Tech after his junior year. His initial major at Tech was Electrical Engineering. In the course of first-year EE classes, he discovered a DEC PDP/8 computer in a lab, and became instantly enamored with computers. He changed his major to Computer Science in the fall of 1975. In 1976, Lewis transfered to Angelo State University, which had a Computer Science degree program that was attracting national attention because of a NASA grant for a microprocessor lab. The CS program provided a broad introduction to operating systems, compiler theory, and practical applications of microprocessors. Lewis worked with the Intel 8080, Motorola 6800, and Mostek 6502 "KIM" kit. A graduation requirement was to design, build, program and demonstrate a working computer system based on one of these processors, and Lewis finished his 6502 project at 2am the morning it was due. Lewis graduated college in three and a half years. ASTL's principal engineer, Richard Lewis, has been a fixture of the embedded systems market since its earliest conception. He assembled the first personal computer in the state of Texas, his Altair 8800 was serial number 15. Not only did he build the computer from a kit, he fixed a persistent oscillator problem that the manufacturer could not resolve. Mr. Lewis has gone on to lead and support client teams for the most successful technology companies in the U.S. including IBM, Dell, GTE, Eaton, Qualcomm, NCR, HP and many others. His work has led to many scientific breakthroughs including classified projects for the US Navy, US Air Force, US Army, and a number of associated defense contractors. Rick is a well known and trusted vendor to the extreme privacy and security needs of the banking industry, with notable contracts at Regions Bank, Bank of America, and others.