I was born at a very young age in Lowell, Massachusetts.  Quite the jet-setter in my youth, I moved to Miami Beach when I was 1 year old and then up the coast to Fort Lauderdale when I was 2.  Pleased with the perennially balmy weather and my proximity to the world-famous Las Olas beach, I hunkered down in South Florida for the long haul.

The third year of my life is a mystery, but I enrolled at Pine Crest School when I was 4, an institution where I would spend the next fourteen years of my life.  I dabbled in Student Council while in Lower School, but after losing the election for the office of Treasurer in fourth grade (by two votes!), I decided to join the band.  Because I joined late, I could choose only among the trombone, french horn, and tuba.  As our band director demoed them for me, my father leaned over and whispered, “Pick the slidey one!” With those now-famous words, my career as a trombonist was born.

And what a career it was!  Over the nine years I played (grades 4-12), I performed with concert bands, orchestras, pop orchestras, pit orchestras, accompanied solos, duets, trios, quartets, quintets, sextets, ensembles, jazz bands, and jazz combos.  Organizations included the New England Music Camp for two summers, Interlochen for three summers, the Florida Youth Orchestra for six seasons, the Ars Flores Chamber Orchestra for four seasons, the Sunrise Symphonic Pops Orchestra for three seasons, and the Florida All-State bands for two years.  Notable conductors I performed under include Frederick Fennell, James Judd, Thomas Sleeper, and many others that I’ve since forgotten but should dig up.  At various points, my instructors were Dale Wadman, Mike Balough, Hugh Harbison, and Philip Jameson.  My trombones were Speedy, Thunder, and Boomer.  (And yes, I made it to Carnegie Hall.  How?  Practice!  Or belong to the Florida Youth Orchestra during the 2001-2002 season, which I thankfully did.)

For better or for worse, I stopped playing when I accepted the Trustee Scholarship from Boston University in the fall of 2005.  After dabbling in chemistry and economics (and seeing snow for the first time!) during my freshman year, I took a statistics course and enjoyed working at the intersection of quantitative thinking and practical applications.  My sophomore year saw me continuing to meet my statistics requirements while exploring other departments, such as biology and nutrition, for a double major.  However, the mathematics department kindly took me under its wing and into its combined B.A./M.A. degree program, promising me both degrees after only four years of education.  I took nothing but mathematics, statistics, and biostatistics classes for my last two years at BU (with the exception of tango and salsa classes during my senior year), and as promised, graduated Phi Beta Kappa in May 2009 with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mathematics, both with specialization in statistics.  I was graciously awarded the College Prize for Excellence in Statistics, as voted by the members of the mathematics department faculty, and was even asked to give the student speech at the graduation ceremony, which was an honor and a pleasure.

My college summers were interesting and exciting in their own ways, too.  During the 2006 summer, I worked as a Move Coordinator at the Gentle Giant Moving Company, which was a great place to work.  The 2007 summer had me participating in the University of Maryland‘s Joint Program in Survey Methodology Junior Fellow Program.  I worked as an intern at the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis doing large-scale SAS programming for the current Chief Economist of the BEA, Dr. Ana Aizcorbe.  I spent my 2008 summer participating in Arizona State University‘s excellent Mathematical and Theoretical Biology Institute under the direction of Dr. Carlos Castillo-Chavez.  I worked with Dr. David Hiebeler and other program participants developing and analyzing a spatial model to understand the effects of vaccination patterns in populations on disease outbreak.

After graduating from Boston University in 2009 with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in statistics, I started working as a statistical geneticist at Biogen Idec and blogging.  In the summer of 2010, both of these activities came to an end after a great year of growth, maturing, and fun.  And in the fall of 2010, I boldly set out to see a new part of the country and immerse myself in many things nerdy and quantitative.  The plan: a PhD in statistics at UC Berkeley.