in 1968, lipton received his undergraduate degree in mathematics from case western reserve university. in 1973, he received his ph.d. from carnegie mellon university; his dissertation, supervised by david parnas, is entitled "on synchronization primitive systems". after graduating, lipton taught at yale 1973–1978, at berkeley 1978–1980, and then at princeton 1980–2000. since 2000, lipton has been at georgia tech. while at princeton, lipton worked in the field of dna computing. since 1996, lipton has been the chief consulting scientist at telcordia.