Mark Leon grew up in a rather rough East San Jose neighborhood, and graduated from James Lick High School in 1980. He originally began taking a slightly more academic route to life when he began hiding in the library from other high school students who were attempting to beat him up.[1]
He also attended San Jose State University[2] and won a silver medal in the 1985 Collegiate National Judo Championships.[1] He received his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1986.[3]
In the 1980s Leon was instrumental in establishing trans-Atlantic communication between American, French and English space agencies. In the 1990s he completed the first audio/video link to Antarctica. This was thought to be impossible at the time.[4]
For many years Mark Leon worked as a Master of Ceremonies in many FIRST robotics competition events both on and off season. He was particularly well known for wearing a bright blue NASA coat and dying his hair the same color for these events and coined the phrase "Do the math, Save the world".[5][1] He was widely cited as an inspiration to many high school students to build robots and impacted many career choices. He is also credited with the existence of a large number of FRC teams.[6]
Beginning in 1998 Mark moved to the Robotics Alliance Project at NASA Ames.[1] This department works primarily in educational and outreach projects and was estimated in 2006 to have reached more than 100,000 middle and high school students.[4] He also ran the Ames Robotics Academy every summer.[7]
