Doug L. Hoffman has worked professionally as a mathematician, a computer programmer, an engineer, a computer salesman, a scientist, and a college professor. Hoffman earned a BS in Applied Mathematics, from the Florida Institute of Technology. He has performed hydro-acoustic work for the U.S. Navy, and helped develop environmental models for the Saudi Arabian government. In the 1990s, he earned a Masters degree and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. There he did research in Molecular Dynamics Simulations and helped develop high-speed comparison methods for RNA, DNA, and protein sequences. Since 2000, he has been working in industry as a Computer Scientist for a major information processing company. Dr. Hoffman has continued to teach at Hendrix College and the University of Central Arkansas. He is currently working on M'tak Ks'fek, the third book in the T'aafhal Inheritance trilogy.