I grew up on Long Island in the town of Commack. After graduating from Commack North High School in 1988, I attended The Pennsylvania State University, with a double-major in Physics and Astronomy/Astrophysics. In 1992, I moved to Baltimore, where I attended The Johns Hopkins University. While at JHU, I studied under Arthur Davidsen and worked on the Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope project. After defending my Ph.D. in 1996, I worked as a research associate on the Instrument Definition Team of the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. In 2001, I became an Instrument Scientist for the Space Telescope Science Institute. I currently live in Columbia, Maryland, with my wife Deb, a middle school teacher in nearby Laurel, and our daughter Kate.