Before joining Berkeley in 2014, Thomas was at Stanford University, where he was supported by a postdoctoral fellowship through the NSF Center for Science of Information. He graduated summa cum laude with a BSc in Electrical Engineering from Michigan Technological University in 2007, and received his MSc and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from UCLA in 2008 and 2012, respectively. Courtade's research interests lie in the intersection of information theory and computer science, and he focuses on problems and applications therein.