My microbiology education began primarily at a summer camp for oceanography, in the mornings. I proceeded to take a microbiology laboratory techniques class in high school. I did a short high school thesis on the ecological impact of food additives with regard to oral bacteria, and worked at SUNY Stony Brook on the ecology of bacteriocins. My undergraduate education was at Harvard. I did an undergraduate thesis, ecology but not particular to bacteria, and during my masters degree, phylogeny of bacterial RuBisCO among other things. My Ph.D. was at Yale University, the ecology of bacteriocins - continued. After a summer instructing undergraduate biology laboratory, I joined Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT as a postdoctoral associate and had an opportunity to lecture on environmental microbiology. Working primarily on marine ecology, I also included some work on the bacteriocins. Following this, I joined the Army to help start a department which studies combat wound infections. Most recently, I have joined the Naval Research Laboratory as a research microbiologist.