Rick Walker is a principal project engineer at HP Laboratories, specializing in phased-locked loop theory and high-speed circuit design. He joined HP Laboratories in 1981 and has since specialized in high speed clock recovery circuits. Born in San Rafael, California, he received his BS degree in Engineering and Applied Science from the California Institute of Technology in 1982, and his MS degree in Computer Science from California State University at Chico in 1992. He has authored 16 professional papers and holds eight patents in the areas of high-speed links and circuit design. Rick plays bass guitar and five-string bluegrass banjo. He is an advanced class amateur radio operator (WB6GVI) and a private pilot.
Rick has a long-standing interest in ecology, biodiversity, and botany. He cultivates many exotic and ethnobotanically interesting plants, including several hundred species of carnivorous plants in indoor terrariums and a backyard greenhouse. Rick is a member of the San Francisco Bay Area Carnivorous Plant Society, and as the president of the International Carnivorous Plant Society.