About

I'm originally from just outside Richmond, Virginia in the United States. I grew up playing basketball, and I transitioned to playing volleyball when I was about 12. Then I played for my school's team and the Richmond Volleyball Club (RVC). I played for RVC for 5 years, and was the team captian for 4 of those years. I was awarded the "For the Love of the Game" scholarship from RVC and was a Richmond Time's Dispatch Scholar Athlete of the Year finalist. Then I completed my Bachelor's at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia. While there I was quite active in the physics and astronomy communities, and I played on the university's men's volleyball team for all four years. I was the captian for two of those years. Once the pandemic began and the volleybal season was cancelled in Spring 2020, I started running for exercise, which I continue today.

Then in the the Fall of 2020, I moved to Heidelberg, Germany to begin my Ph.D. at MPIA. This was unforunately quite bad timing, as the country went into lockdown one month after I moved there. But once the country opened up again in Spring 2021, I bought a gravel bike and fell in love with cycling, both as a commute to work and as a sport / hobby. In Summer 2022, I went for a 10 day bike tour from Heidelberg to the North Sea in Amsterdam and back. I averaged riding 150km per day, and visited 4 national parks in 3 countries during the trip. I'm currently planning and training for bike tours to from Heidelberg to Nice and back, from HD to Portugal and back, and to complete the Eversting challenge, when you ride up and down the same hill enough times that the total elevation gain is the same as Mount Everst: 8848m.

In 2023, I had some ambitious goals for long distancing running and cycling, but unfortunately due to some injuries I have needed to focus on my health and recovery. As a reminder, these two activities -- running and cycling -- facilitate my true favorite hobby: consuming as many calories as possible. My two main sources of calories would be food and beverage, and I like to say that I'm on a 4000 calorie, all carb diet. Luckily in Germany, there's a saying that three beers are also a meal. On my tour to the Netherlands and back, I spent more money on food than on housing. And while not very high in calories, I also drink many liters of water every day. Friends and colleagues will tell you that I have constant reminders to drink water, and I share these reminders with everyone around me. And without water, it would be much more difficult to eat so much!

Besides these two main hobbies, I generally love being outdoors and moving around. Many people have compared me to an enthusiastic dog, especially when it comes to playing Frisbee. I also love spikeball, skiing / ski touring, hiking, and any activity where I can combine multiple of my hobbies. This commonly manifests itself as drinking beer on the tops of mountains. And occasionally, I pretend to be a model and attempt to get sponsered by various companies.