Born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1950, Chris graduated from the Warsaw School of Economics (SGPiS) in 1972, where he also taught economic theory while working on his doctorate (1976). Assistant professor between 1976 and 1979 at the Warsaw School of Economics. Between 1980 and 1983, assistant, associate, and full professor at the Regional Institute of Technology (Instituto Technológico Regional) in Ciudad Madero, Mexico, where he taught graduate courses in the Master’s Programme in Administrative Systems (Maestría en Sistemas Administrativos).

In July 1983 Chris took permanent residence in Canada (and became Canadian citizen in 1986), where – after a brief stint in the Institute for Policy Analysis, University of Toronto, he directed – for the next 30 years – a research computing centre for the social sciences and the humanities (CHASS) in the Faculty of Arts & Science, University of Toronto. As Director of CHASS Chris embarked on the programme of building large economic and social data repositories for teaching and research, comprising over 60 million time series of the main Canadian national database (CANSIM), all Canadian censuses, trade data, Canadian and American stock exchange data, and multiple other databases – all offered to students and researchers from over 65 subscribing universities through a set of WEB-based search and retrieval interfaces. Much of this work has been done in cooperation with Statistics Canada, and relies on the daily data feed from Statistics Canada.

Chris retired from the University of Toronto in 2014, and yet  – as during his working career – still does not have enough time for many of his interests and hobbies. He has been thoroughly enjoying his retirement, dedicating his time to reading, live theatre, photography, other visual arts, and travels. He lives in Mississauga, Ontario, with his wife and two cats.