I was born on the fifteenth of March, 1983, in Flushing,
Queens. I've lived in Queens my entire life, in an old Victorian
house in College Point. I have one older brother, a graduate of
SUNY Maritime College in the Bronx.  My father is a health
physicist, currently working on his doctorate here at Stony
Brook, and my mother is an elementary school teacher at a
Catholic school in Whitestone. Ever since I was a small child,
it seemed as though I was destined for mathematical greatness.
As a child, mathematics came easy for me. I taught myself how to
multiply in kindergarden, by looking at window panes and
realising that "four threes is twelve."

     But I also loved to read, and by the time I was in seventh
grade, I was working on my first novel. And by the time I was
going into high school, I consistently scored higher on the
verbal sections of standardized tests.  I went to Dominican
Academy High School in Manhattan.  While there, I enrolled in
all the science courses I could manage and all the accelerated
mathematics courses. In my spare time, I continued with my
passions: reading, writing, and acting; but my academic focus
was on my studies in mathematics and science. At the moment, I
am working for a bachelor of science degree in geology, and I plan
to join the navy after graduation.