(2 bonus points to any student who can tell me where that quote is from)
How did you get here?
I received my bachelor's degree in Biochemistry from the University of Nebraska, and my Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Minnesota. I spent a few years at Washington University in St. Louis as a postdoc before accepting a position at the Protein Data Bank. If you want more nitty gritty details, see my CV.
What do you do?
My time is currently taken up by our 14-month old daughter, Iona. My wife, Dr. Amy Reese, is also a scientist, and teaches Microbiology at Cedar Crest College. We feel very fortunate having a slightly more relaxed pace during the summer to spend with her. Should you like to see what Iona and her fuzzy brothers and sisters look like, have a look at my personal photo gallery.
That's it?
Well... pretty much. I enjoy singing, but haven't had a chance to do it much since moving to Pennsylvania. I'm a bari-tenor, meaning my "true" voice is that of a bass-baritone, but because tenors are in short supply, I usually end up on tenor. Yes, that's me. In tights. You got a problem with that? I also enjoy dinking around on computers. This has been known to come in handy when doing bioinformatics. Oh, and I also enjoy playing Guitar Hero. This has been known to come in very unhandy when doing bioinformatics. Now if I could only wire up the guitar controller to the DNA sequencer, and play the bases as they go through the detector. Hmmm....
Are you a computer geek?
Hrm.... probably. I have Windows Vista installed on my media center at home, the lab server (that is serving you the page you are currently reading) runs FreeBSD, the workstation in my office is a Silicon Graphics workstation, and my office computer is a Mac. I do shy away from Windows, as I am most comfortable with the unixy goodness of Linux and Mac OS X. Most of the programs and utilities we use in structural biology and bioinformatics are written for unix. As Mac OS X is built on top of unix, this means I can test/develop programs on my office computer before transferring them to the lab server.