He received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Georgia Tech in 1984. His other degrees include an M.S.E.E. from Purdue University and a B.E.E. from Georgia Tech. Prior to returning to Georgia Tech to work on his Ph.D., he worked as a systems analyst for Texas Instruments in Austin, Texas, and as a senior engineer for Martin Marietta in Denver, Colorado. Professor Hamblen's current research interests include rapid prototyping, high-speed parallel and VLSI computer architectures, computer-aided design, and reconfigurable computing.