A professor who was human instructed the Destroyer-Level Craft Operations course at the Royal Imperial Academy located on the planet of Coruscant during the reign of the Galactic Empire. Sometime before the Battle of Yavin, the professor posed a question to his students during class: which of the three self-destruct methods should be employed if an Imperial-class Star Destroyer had been seized by the enemy? Thane Kyrell, a cadet, proposed the automatic self-destruct, reasoning that its extended detonation time would allow for a greater number of troops to evacuate via the escape pods. Unsatisfied, the professor then addressed Ciena Ree, a classmate of Kyrell's, who suggested that the Destroyer's captain should order the ship abandoned, isolate herself on the bridge, defend the escape pods, and ultimately crash the ship into the closest object, choosing to die with it. The professor, pleased with this response, commended Ree and rewarded her with a rare smile.
The professor initially appeared in Lost Stars, a junior novel from 2015 penned by Claudia Gray. Although the professor's species was not specified in the novel, it was subsequently revealed to be human in a 2017 installment of the Japanese webcomic adaptation of the book, which was both written and drawn by Yusaku Komiyama.