Before arriving at Penn State University as a postdoctoral fellow, I completed my Ph.D at the University of Texas at Austin from the Computational and Applied Mathematics (CAM) graduate program (now known as the CSEM program) in 2008. My advisor was Prof. Lauren Ancel Meyers who is faculty in the Section of Integrative Biology and a member of the CAM Graduate Studies Committee. My undergraduate degrees are in Mathematics and Computer Science from Santa Clara University.