He received S.B. degrees in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science and in Mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1996). He studied at the University of Cambridge, where he earned a Certificate of Advanced Study in Mathematics, with distinction (1997). He received a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University (2007). Prior to his doctoral studies, he developed quantitative methods in a number of entrepreneurial ventures: as a partner in a $200 million fixed-income arbitrage hedge fund, as the director of scientific computing at an early-stage drug discovery start-up , and as the founder of a computer security software start-up.