He earned a B.S. in Chemistry in 2000 from the University of Rochester. After a year-long stint at the Eastman Kodak Company as a research chemist, he entered graduate school at MIT. He received his Ph.D. in organic chemistry in 2006 under the guidance of Prof. Timothy Swager. From 2006-2009, he was an American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Prof. George Whitesides at Harvard University. Since starting his independent career at Tufts, Sam has been the recipient of a 2009 DARPA Young Faculty Award, a 2010 Thieme Publishers Journal Award, and a 2012 NSF CAREER Award. His research focuses on using physical organic chemistry to design new photoresponsive materials for applications in self-assembly, sensing, and patterning.