I am originally from the New York City area and received my education in the northeast, at the University of Connecticut (BS) and Rutgers University (PhD). I then moved even further north as a post-doctoral research associate at the National Research Council of Canada in Ottawa, Canada. Prior to starting in academics, I worked in the pharmaceutical industry at Hoffman-LaRoche (Nutley, NJ), and in the biotechnology group at Battelle Memorial Institute (Columbus, Ohio).