I was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1980, to a labor lawyer and a union organizer. I am a proud student of the New York City public school system, and I attended Stuyvesant High School from 1994 to 1998. I got my BA in 2002 from Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, with majors in mathematics and neuroscience. After graduating, I worked for two years, including time spent researching schizophrenia at Columbia University. I have been a graduate student at the University of Arizona since 2004.