I grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts and was an undergraduate at Cornell University. I spent my junior year studying mathematics at the University of Warwick where I met my wife the first morning at breakfast. When I returned to Cornell for my senior year I studied equal circle packing as my senior thesis under the direction of Dr. Bob Connelly. After graduating magna cum laude, I attended graduate school in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania. I earned my MSE in Computer and Information Science in May 1999 and a PhD in Mathematics in May 2000 from the University of Pennsylvania.  I have been at Grand Valley State University (GVSU) ever since, earning tenure and promotion to Associate Professor in July 2006. In 2006, I was a visiting scholar at Cornell for a semester and again got to study equal circle packing with Dr. Connelly.

The pictures in the side bar are of me in Nevada (when my family visited my sister), my beautiful wife who is a romance writer, my youngest son at Walt Disney World and a close personal friend. When I have the energy for it my hobbies include wood working and I enjoy band hero and adventure computer games.