I grew up in Denver, Colorado where I played a lot of sports and worked in construction as a waterproofer and an
electrician. I attended Northwestern University from 2002-2006, where I studied Computer Science. During this time,
I received research grants from Northwestern University, Motorola, and the Ford Motor Company (mostly to research
vehicular networks). I began my PhD study at the University of Colorado in 2006 where my research on ad-hoc networks
continued into sensor networks. I was a visiting research specialist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research
during the summer of 2007. In 2008 I received an NSF GK-12 fellowship and started a company with my advisor, focused
on Mobile Social Networks. In 2009, my startup company (Techoshark, inc.) received a NSF-SBIR grant and filed two
provisional patents related to mobile social network architectures. Since then my research has been largely focused
around mobile social networks, context-aware systems, and privacy/security within these systems.