I spent the first eighteen years of my life in Tenafly, NJ. It's a suburban town just across the Hudson River from Yonkers and the Bronx. I still think that area is one of the most beautiful places on earth.
In 1993, I started attending the University of California at Berkeley, where I earned my degree in mathematics. I stayed in the Bay Area for 5 years afterwards. Most of that time was spent working as a software engineer for an internet company called CNET. During the summer of 2002, I moved to Massachusetts in order to attend Tufts University part-time while continuing to work for CNET in their Cambridge office. In 2004, I left my job at CNET to become a full-time graduate student. I graduated from Tufts University with a Ph.D. in computer science in 2010.