David M. Mertz is an employee of Gearbox Software, the company that was in charge of porting Halo onto the PC. He was one of the multiplayer map designers. David left behind his graduate studies in Biomedical Engineering at Virginia Tech to join the games industry. While David has been editing levels since the days of Doom, his professional game development career began when he joined Gearbox Software. During his time there, he worked on Half-Life: Opposing Force and co-designed and created Half-Life: Blue Shift. David has had the fortunate opportunity to work on some of the biggest franchises in PC gaming, including Half-Life, James Bond, and most recently Microsoft's Halo for the PC.