Mario was born in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico in 1942. In his early years, he lived in Puerto Rico, spent several years in the New York City area, attended a boarding school in the Tampa, Florida area, and obtained his high school degree in Miami while living in Hialeah, Florida.

For his undergraduate studies, after 5 years of study, he received his BSEE degree from the University of Florida in December of 1965. His studies included participating in a work-study co-op program with the Project Mercury Program at NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center, Cape Canaveral (Cape Kennedy), FL. During one work period, he was used by NASA as a “test astronaut” and was suited up in Astronaut Walter M. Schirra’s spacesuit.

He began his Engineering career with Bell Telephone Laboratories in Holmdel, NJ in the Submarine Cable division, where he also participated in a Graduate Study program culminating in his MSEE degree in 1968 from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (New York University today). While in NJ, he also worked for Burroughs Corporation in Piscataway, NJ designing core memory systems in their Small Systems Memory Division. He also worked for a minicomputer company in Fairfield, NJ.

Mario returned in 1977 to Florida (Ft. Lauderdale) and for the next 12 years he worked for Systems Engineering Laboratories (later became Gould, Inc.,( Computer Systems Division) and Modular Computer Systems, Inc. Both were super-minicomputer companies specializing in the fast response simulation industry which used shared memory systems in multi-computer environments to increase computer performance. He also managed a technical group working on a RISC single board computer system.

In a career change, starting in 1994, became completed Novell and Microsoft server system certifications, was President of two computer groups. He also qualified as a Professional Engineer (PE) in the State of Florida while employed by an environmental engineering company supporting Novell servers at several locations. Because of his PE license and background, he accepted a Microsoft backed startup in Doral, FL as Director of Engineering. The company ran a data center and transmitted satellite data a video to South America. Before retiring in 2013, Mario spent 9 years consulting as a Network support and server systems design engineer for four non-profits businesses.