I grew up in New York, and nearly all of my family still live there. For my undergraduate degree, I attended Penn State, with a double major in physics and astrophysics. I then moved to Baltimore, where I attended The Johns Hopkins University under Arthur Davidsen. During that time, I worked on the Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope and its associated space shuttle mission. My first job out of graduate school was a postdoc with the instrument definition team of the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. In 2001, I joined the staff of the Space Telescope Science Institute, where I have worked in various roles on our missions. I was an instrument scientist for Hubble for 7 years, then the Mission Scientist for James Webb for 8 years, and most recently I returned to Hubble as the Mission Head. I currently live in Columbia, Maryland, with my wife Deb, a middle school teacher in nearby Laurel, and our daughter Kate.