Dragoslav Siljak was a professor of Electrical Engineering at Santa Clara University, where he held the title of Benjamin and Mae Swig University Professor. He received the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering in 1963 from the University of Belgrade. In 1963, Siljak was promoted to the rank of Docent. Soon after promotion, he accepted an invitation by G. J. Thaler to visit Santa Clara University, and left for USA in 1964. Immediately after arriving at Santa Clara, Siljak started building a research base centered around parameter space methods for the design of control systems. He interacted with Thaler in their common research interest, and in 1965 they obtained a research grant from NASA Ames Research Center to develop the parameter space approach.