Oscar was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and lived there until he graduated from the University of Buenos Aires as a Civil Engineer. After that he moved to Europe and lived in Italy and Spain. He worked in Madrid and Barcelona in a Spanish construction firm for one year before coming to the US. In the meantime he married Maria Cecilia whom he met in Buenos Aires while they were graduate students (she graduated as an Architect also from the University of Buenos Aires). In the U.S., they both went to the Ohio State University to study Urban Planning. Oscar received a dual Master in Urban Planning and Civil Engineering in September 1988 and a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering in January 1993 from that institution. One month after graduating he came to ORNL. His wife also received a Ph.D. in 1993 from OSU in the area of Urban Planning. She is currently teaching at the University of Tennessee and working as a consultant for the World Bank in Latin America.

Oscar and Maria have two daughters, Lucia and Veronica, who were born in Columbus, Ohio. They have made (with the parents and alone) many trips to Argentina to visit grandparents and cousins, and, because of that, they speak perfect Spanish. They are very good students and also very good soccer players. Although Oscar has not had many cultural clashes in the US, there has been one. Soccer in Argentina, and most other countries, is a male sport (like football in the US). So it never crossed his mind when he was growing up that his daughters would play soccer. Oscar admits that that was a very chauvinistic view: "skills and intelligence are all that counts."

"My family and I love the US. It has given us opportunities that we did not even dream about. But what I most admire about this country is its vitality and the sense that nothing is impossible."

Jim's wife Paula (actually Paulina Helena) was born in Santiago, Chile in 1953. Her parents were citizens of Poland during World War II when Nazi Germany invaded Poland, forced them from their homes, and placed them in Nazi Slave Labor Camps. Paula's two oldest siblings were born in the Camps before the family emigrated (fled) from Europe at the end of WWII. After settling in Santiago, Chile, Paula's parents began to rebuild their lives, learned another new language (they already were fluent in five), and gave birth to another son and daughter (Paula). However, as a result of rising Nationalism in Chile and the desire for better living and working conditions, the family emigrated to the United States when Paula was eight years old. In February 1961, the family arrived in Cleveland, Ohio.

Paula learned English while going to school, but Spanish and Ukrainian were spoken at home. After Paula graduated from high school, the family moved to San Antonio, Texas where Paula became a Naturalized Citizen of the United States when she was 18 years old. She met Jim at Southwest Research Institute where they both worked and got married in 1975. Their first daughter, Kristina, was born in San Antonio a year before they moved to Oak Ridge in 1980. Over the next 13 years they had three more daughters, Deanna, Melanie, and Andrea.

Paula currently works for PWT and is a subcontractor to Bechtel Jacobs at the Document Management Center at ETTP. Her Spanish heritage has provided her the opportunity to perform Spanish translation services for her employers and later as an independent consultant when the two youngest daughters were babies.

Twenty year old, Kristina, has completed two years of a five year program at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville where she plans to earn degrees in Spanish (or English) and Elementary Education. At Oak Ridge High School, she earned college credit for Advanced Spanish courses. She was also awarded a State of Tennessee Minority Teaching Scholarship (as a result of her Hispanic background). Her passion is music and she moonlights as a songwriter, vocalist, and guitarist with a local band and performs on weekends at college and local hangouts. Deanna (almost 16) is an Oak Ridge High School Sophomore, where she is a top runner in track and cross country and plays percussion in the high school band. She is a talented artist and is active in the student Young Life organization, student council, and charitable organizations. In elementary school, she participated in Oak Ridge's first Spanish Immersion Program and has continued studying Spanish in high school. Melanie (age 9) and Andrea (age 5) are Woodland Elementary School students. Melanie and Andrea are both involved in Indian Princesses (a father/daughter social organization). Melanie is also involved in Girls Scouts, and Girls Club basketball and softball (Dad is coach). The two oldest girls, along with their Mother, are fluent in Spanish and often converse with Paula's mother in Spanish. The whole family enjoys its multi-cultural heritage--especially at mealtimes, family reunions, and weddings.

Emilio was born in Monterrey, N.L., Mexico in 1950. He, along with his parents, came to the U.S. in 1952. His father is a physician who had come to the States to work and learn English before returning to Mexico. However, his father decided that it would be best to stay in America, because he saw that America would provide a better opportunity for his young family. He has one brother, born in Knoxville, in 1956. Emilio and his parents became naturalized citizens in 1959. At a very young age, Emilio displayed a keen interest in airplanes and anything involving aviation. During high school, Emilio earned money with odd jobs to help pay for flying lessons. While attending the University of Tennessee, he earned his Private Pilot's Certificate, along with his Bachelor of Science Degree. Furthering his education and skills, he eventually earned his Instrument Rating, Multi-Engine Rating, and Instructor's Certificates. In 1979, Emilio earned his Airline Transport Certificate, the "Ph.D." of the aviation world. He taught flying lessons for several years and worked as a charter pilot for many years, before securing a position as a corporate pilot with a local investment firm. In attempting to broaden his experience base, he has flown many types of aircraft and worked for several corporations, including some local, well-known, developers. In 1986, TVA hired him as a pilot. With the downsizing that took place in September of 1988, he was released. Shortly afterward, he began flying as Chief Pilot for former Senator Howard H. Baker, Jr. It was a very good working relationship, lasting over five years. In April of 1995, Emilio's dream of flying for a large, well-known, airline came true. He began working for Federal Express. He currently is flying as a First Officer on the Airbus A300 and A310 aircraft, which are large, wide-body, twin-engine, jets. With FedEx, he has flown to many places in the U.S. and Canada. Currently, he is flying to Guadalajara, Mexico.

In 1981, while on a SCUBA trip with the local diving club, Emilio met his wife, Becky. They were married in 1982, during the World's Fair held in Knoxville that year. In 1984, their daughter, Monica was born. Both Becky and Monica enjoy flying with Emilio in small airplanes, especially in the biplane that Emilio completed and first flew in late 1993. Becky and Emilio still SCUBA, even as recently as this past summer while vacationing in the British Virgin Islands. While Monica has snorkeled for several years, hopefully, she will learn to SCUBA in the near future.

In 1986 Edgar earned a B.Sc. degree in Engineering Physics from the Autonomous Metropolitan University in Mexico City. With the recent string of catastrophes in Turkey, Greece and Taiwan, he recalls an event from his college years that left a permanent mark in his memory: the 8.1 earthquake (and its aftershocks) that destroyed a good part of Mexico City in 1985. "At the University, we assembled a rescue team and spent the next three days pulling people and corpses from the rubble. The destruction and misery was only comparable with what I remember seeing in History books in pictures of Berlin at the end of WWII. Another indelible image was the despair in the faces of people who were aimlessly wandering the streets with their children on hand and nowhere to go." After the earthquake, Edgar worked as a volunteer doing engineering calculations for the reconstruction of housing projects in downtown Mexico City.

"In 1987, I was subjected to a thermal shock when I moved from Mexico City to upstate NY to enroll in graduate school at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute." At Rensselaer, Edgar received a research fellowship from the U.S. Office of Naval Research and DARPA to study the thermomechanical behavior of ceramic fibers, and in 1992, he earned a Ph.D. degree in Materials Engineering. Shortly after, he joined ORNL first as a postdoctoral researcher and later on in 1993 as a development staff member. His first contact with ORNL occurred in 1991 when he visited the High Temperature Materials Laboratory as a user to conduct a series of measurements for his thesis work. During that visit he met Matt Ferber and Michael Jenkins (now a professor at the University of Washington) who invited him to join the lab, a decision that he says, he will never regret. In 1997 Edgar received the "Hispanic Engineer of the Year" award for Outstanding Technical Achievements for his research work with ceramic matrix composites.

Edgar lives in west Knoxville with his wife Ivonne and his ultra-smart, bilingual dog J. C. Maxwell (who is rumored to have written most of the equations that appear in the papers that Edgar has published in recent years!). Edgar enjoys playing tennis and chess.

"Despite some problems in our society and an occasional disagreements with U.S. foreign policy in Latin America, I am sure that those like I who have had an opportunity to compare living conditions inside and outside the U.S. will agree with me when I say that indeed this is the land of opportunity and that there is no place like this great country in the world"

Edgar has provided us with some photographs of his family, as well as some very good photographs of the great cathedral and the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City.

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