On April 7, 1928, actor James Garner of TV's The Rockford Files was born in Norman, Oklahoma. Exactly thirty-six years later, on April 7, 1964, Joseph P. Havlicek was born in West Lafayette, IN, right across the Wabash river from Lafayette, hometown of rocker Axl Rose. Later that very same day, IBM released the System/360, the world's first microcoded time sharing virtual memory computer system. Though he did not realize it at that time, Havlicek would years later work for IBM after his professional name had been changed to Joebob and would even have permanent domicile in Norman, OK.

Joebob received the B.S. degree in 1986 and the M.S. degree in 1988 from Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, Blacksburg, VA, and the Ph.D. degree in 1996 from the University of Texas at Austin, all in electrical engineering.

From 1984 to 1987, he was with Management Systems Laboratories, Blacksburg, VA, as a software engineer. From 1987 to 1989, he was affiliated with SFA, Inc., Landover, MD, and from 1987 to 1997 he was with the Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC, where his research included high performance signal and image processing. In 1993 he was a programmer--analyst with Ralph Kirkley Associates, Austin, TX, working on-site in the multimedia division of IBM, Austin. Since January, 1997, he has been with the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, where he holds a Williams Presidential Professorship. His research interests include signal and image processing, particularly in the modulation domain, statistical signal processing, target tracking, machine vision, and intelligent transportation systems.