After graduating from Unity High School, David Meharry earned a BS in Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1971 he moved to Finland where he attended graduate school and earned a doctoral degree from the Helsinki University of Technology. In 1972 he married Marja Aarnilinna who had been the Finnish exchange student at Unity High School in 1966-67. Soon after moving back to Massachusetts in 1977, Dr. Meharry joined Sanders Associates (now BAE Systems) in Nashua, NH, where his work in the Microelectronics Center has centered on GaAs Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuits, components important in defense electronics. Dr. Meharry has numerous scientific papers, several patents awarded and pending, and has been active in the IEEE Microwave Theory & Techniques Society. He also recently received prestigious recognition as a BAE Systems Engineering and Scientific Fellow.
Throughout his life, David has balanced his specialized technical career with an active involvement in music. He sang with the Boston Symphony's Tanglewood Festival Chorus for nearly twenty years and continues to sing with several choral groups. He has also been an avid runner, completing the Boston Marathon in 1995 and 1996. David and Marja have two grown children and continue to live in Lexington, MA, where David is a lay minister at First Parish Unitarian Universalist. They return regularly to Illinois to visit his mother near Philo and also spend time at their summer home in Finland.