Background -- Doctor Ashok "Doc" Gupta

This man is very elusive.  From his knowledge, he has obviously had a formal education that spans both digital electronics and biogenetics.  The only program I know about that would fit the bill would be an interdisciplinary study at Stanford, like an MD/PhD program -- they were definitely doing DNA splicing, growing plasmids, and having protests from the PETA folks about the rights of lab animals.  However, I can't get the University to release any records to me.  It is perfectly possible that he was educated overseas, in which case I haven't got a chance of tracking him down.  His level of arrogance fits with the elitist PhD though.

It is also very possible that he has changed his name more than once.  I find lots of people remember an Indian fellow that resembled "Doc", but always they have a hard time remembering how to pronounce, or spell, his name.  He was a bit older than he first seemed, and probably pursued higher education later in life.  I estimate he was born about 1945-50 -- right in the middle of the post-WWII baby boom.

I estimate he earned his PhD no later than 1985, since much of the technology he worked with was relatively new when I was at Stanford.  This would have him working for a biotech startup company only a very short time before coming to Blarneywood later in 1985.  He evidently made quite a lot of money in that very short time.  I suspect he left school with some patentable genetics discovery that went to a start-up.  Venture capital was flowing freely in those days, and he could have pocketed quite a sum, put in a token appearance at the new firm, then left.

What attracted him to Blarneywood is obvious - he was obsessed with the local legends of spirits and fairies, which a scientist can only read as "undiscovered species".  This Appalachian backwater caries quite a lure to the biochemist.

He obviously spread some money around on his arrival to ingratiate himself to the locals, but the most important item on his agenda was, I think, the creation of the local branch of the Young Rangers program, units A and B.  I think even then he was trying to get eyes and ears out in the field for his researches, but he may not have been real happy with the results.  The girl's unit "A" turned into a social circle and the boys "B" unit was more interested in sports and recreation than science and ecology.  Both were very status-conscious, run by the parents, and did not bend easily to his direction.  His later intervention to create the mixed "C" unit, which had zero parent involvement, seems to have been more successful in this regard.