Roger Joseph McNichols was born on 13 December 1969 in Texarkana, Texas where he lived until age seven. He grew up primarily in Toledo, Ohio where he graduated from Ottawa Hills High School in 1988 a National Merit Scholar. In spring of 1992, he earned the Bachelor of Science Degree in electrical engineering and completed a pre-medicine program at The Ohio State University (Columbus, Ohio.) In the fall of 1992, he began graduate studies at Texas A&M University (College Station, Texas) in biomedical engineering in order to pursue a combined M.D./Ph.D. degree. In the fall of 1993, Mr. McNichols began medical school at the Texas A&M College of Medicine under an academic fellowship. He withdrew after completion of the freshman year in order to more actively pursue the Ph.D. degree in engineering.

While in the biomedical engineering program at Texas A&M, Mr. McNichols has worked on a number of research projects in both the Optical Biosensing Lab and the Magnetic Resonance Systems Lab. Past projects include the development of an optical polarimeter for non-invasive measurement of blood glucose through the eye, the use of near-infrared spectroscopy as a means of quantifying blood glucose, and the use of microcoils for NMR spectroscopy. Mr. McNichols was also instrumental in the development of a laboratory course in biomedical optics and the design of the Biomedical Optics Laboratory. During the 1997-1998 academic year, he served as Assistant Lecturer in the biomedical engineering program teaching courses in electronics, instrumentation, and signal processing. Mr. McNichols currently serves as vice-president of BioTex, Inc., a small medical device company which he co-founded in 1997. His hobbies include writing and performing music on keyboards and guitar.

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