Mark Leon grew up in a rather rough East San Jose neighborhood, and graduated from James Lick High School in 1980.
[1] He also attended San Jose State University[2] and won a silver medal in the 1985 Collegiate National Judo Championships.
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.
[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.