Jacques F. Vallee serves as a General Partner of Euro-America Ventures, a Silicon Valley group that invests in North America and Europe, primarily in high-technology. He was born in France, where he received a B.S. in mathematics at the Sorbonne and an M.S. in astrophysics at Lille University. Coming to the U.S. as an astronomer at the University of Texas, where he co-developed the first computer-based map of Mars for NASA, Jacques later moved to Northwestern University where he received his Ph.D. in computer science. He went on to work at SRI International and the Institute for the Future, where he directed the project to build the world's first network-based groupware system as a Principal Investigator on Arpanet, the prototype for the Internet.

A venture capitalist with Euro-America since 1987, Jacques Vallee has spearheaded early-stage investments in over 60 high technology start-ups. One third of these companies reached the public markets. They include, SangStat Medical, a biotechnology firm based in Menlo Park, California and Nantes, France; Accuray, a medical device company specialized in robotic surgery; Ixys, a power semiconductor firm; and Ubique, Inc., a web teleconferencing company (acquired by AOL).

Other investments that he led include Com-21, P-Com, Harmonic Lightwaves, Isocor and Mercury Interactive, all of which made successful IPOs on the Nasdaq market. He has also served as a director of Class Data Systems, a networking software company (acquired by Cisco), and Trivnet, Ltd., specialized in micropayment.

Jacques is a member of the science board for the French Genopole, based in Evry (www.genopole.com) specializing in life sciences and was elected as a Trustee of the Institute for the Future (www.iftf.org). He has contributed a "Letter from California" column for Le Figaro, archived in the blog, (www.jacquesvallee.net/blog/blog.html).

Apart from his work with information technology and finance, Jacques has had a long-term private interest in astronomy, in writing fiction and in the frontiers of research, notably unidentified aerial phenomena. He also serves on the scientific advisory board of Bigelow Aerospace in Las Vegas, Nevada (www.bigelowaerospace.com). He was awarded the Jules Verne Prize in Paris for a science fiction novel in French.

Jacques and his wife Janine live in San Francisco. They have two children.

Mail can be addressed to Jacques Vallee at:
P.O. Box 641650, San Francisco, CA 94164