Lee Willis was born in Trinidad, Colorado early in the post-World War Two baby boom. By the time he was twelve he had lived in nine different states, as his father, a research geophysicist for a major oil company, moved his high-tech subterranean research team from one location to another throughout the Rockies and Desert Southwest looking for oil fields deep underground. Listening to and watching his father, particularly as he worked with some of the earliest digital computers, he gained an early appreciation for science, and the use of math to make it work.

He attended Rice University where he earned Bachelor’s degrees in Math and Electrical Engineering, and Master’s degrees in both ancient history/archaeology (purely out of interest in history), and Electric Engineering, specialized in the design of computers. Among other things he took part in the university’s first graduate seminar on AI.   Despite his educational specialization in computer design, he chose the electric power industry as his career field because of its fundamental importance to society.  One cannot do anything without energy, and any and everything if one has enough of it.

Lee worked as a field engineer, engineering supervisor and manager of power delivery planning for a major electric utility, was an executive with a global electric utility equipment manufacturer, and then for more than three decades a well-known advisor to the electric industry, its go-to expert on the future of new technologies and their influence on the need for and use of electric energy.  He is the inventor of several engineering techniques now widely used around the world in power engineering and was among the first (1993) to forecast the explosive growth of the data-center industry and the advent of large-scale AI-based load centers.

A lot of Lee’s perspective on technology and history as used in First Touch and its sequels was gained during the six years he served on The National Research Council (NRC), the operating arm of the United States National Academies, a group of experts (forty three at the time) in civilian fields of societal need (energy, fire prevention, policing, etc.) that studied technology and prioritized recommendations to Congress for civilian R&D needs, much as DARPA does for the military.

He has had a life-long addiction to model trains, model ships, and most of all, sports cars, briefly participating in amateur and semi-pro sports car racing before realizing he cared too much about the cars to abuse them enough to win races.   He has been a writer all his life and is the author of over one hundred papers in peer-reviewed technical journals like IEEE Transactions, Computer Applications in Power, and Proceedings of the IEEE as well as over two hundred articles in popular magazines and business journals.  He is the  author of seven technical books including the Power Distribution Planning Reference Book and Spatial Electric Load Forecasting, both going into their third editions soon, a forthcoming study guide on the Hebrew and Christian Bible Book of Ruth, a rather weird fiction book full of model train puns and tall tales (Veranda Turbine) and a series of science fiction novels that explore the possible impact of AI and IT on humankinds future, the first of which is First Touch, as well as its proclivity to keep repeating its past mistakes.

In 2024, he completed an M.Div study program at a Virginia theological university and has worked part time since as a chaplain and spiritual advisor in hospices and home-hospice organizations in the lower income parts of central North Carolina.

He can be reached at bookwriter72@yahoo.com.