He was born in 1951 in Cluj, in the Transylvania region of Romania, the son of Ilie and Rafila Cristian. After graduating from the Nicolae Bălcescu High School in his native city, he went in 1971 to France to study at the Grenoble Institute of Technology, in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science. After graduating in 1977 from both the Institute and the Grenoble School of Management,[1] he pursued his graduate studies in computer science at the University of Grenoble, where he carried out research in operating systems and programming methodology, and received his Ph.D. in 1979.[1][2]