Born in Nigeria, Dr Samuel (Sam) Okechukwu Umealu studied Chemical Engineering at Anambra State University of technology in Nigeria, then earned a PhD also in Chemical Engineering at National Technical University, Athens. In 1992, he migrated to Australia where he joined Monash University, as a Postdoctoral research fellow in the area of process simulation. He left the academia in 1994 to pursue a career in Information Technology. Also a citizen of Australia, Sam lives in Melbourne where he in 1998 founded a technology company - SamSoft PTY LTD and as a Consulting Architect in Information Technology, has personally provided IT consulting services to large commercial and government organisations. He is married to Fleure Vaslet and they have a daughter, Chinelo.