Dave Nocera

 Dave Nocera learned engineering in Elizabeth, New Jersey, by picking through neighborhood garbage with his brothers Andy and Pat — taking apart what others threw away to understand how it worked. It taught them early that everything appearing simple hides tremendous complexity underneath. 

Computing evolves like living systems — constantly, ruthlessly, without warning. Over seventeen years at AT&T as a Unix Guru and Chief Infrastructure Architect, Dave mastered each new landscape: Unix, PC integration, VR, AI, and infrastructure for 14,000 call center agents. He founded Verifichi LLC and built ITVerify, a patented data warehouse that companies including IBM followed. He built it first. He spent ten years at Bank of America as the senior debugger other senior debuggers called when they were out of ideas. While there, he mentored two FIRST Robotics teams, including the only special needs team in the program, earning two Presidential Volunteer Service Awards from President Obama and 

Bank of America’s Diamond Award. 

A second-generation beekeeper, Dave once watched a bee emerge from its cell and saw consciousness being born from instinct and social learning. At sixty-two, he retired to write fiction. He is the author of The Supercolony Wars: An Insect Epic and the forthcoming Timeline 27.