[about me] i like to do a variety of things including art, music, athletics, academics, etc. i live in pittsburgh pa, with my older brother tom7 in what we like to call our "space age bachelor pad".

[academics] Most recently i received my Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in Sept. 2008. Previously i received my B.S. in mechanical engineering from yale university in may 2003. Before that i was a student at Hamden High School in Hamden CT. Preceding that stint i attended Hamden Middle School and West Woods Elementary School. and to start it all off i was a scholar at evergreen nursery school (where i was picked on by a mean girl).

i am currently a graduate student in mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. i work in the nanoRobotics lab at cmu where we are attempting to create synthetic gecko foot hairs for dry adhesion purposes(think one sided velcro that sticks anywhere). Once we perfect our techniques we will build micro wall-climbing robots. check out the lab webpage which i am putting together for the group for more information.

[art] i used to do a lot of pencil and pen drawing when i was younger, specifically when i was bored in class. i haven't been as bored in my classes and i rarely spend a lot of time on a drawing anymore but i have been trying to get back into it. i bought myself an expensive computer drawing tablet and i have been transferring some sketches i made in college to digital format, adding color and photoshop effects. you can see a small selection of my drawings in my gallery. Recently i've been doing most of my drawing in Flash MX, it really feels natural and free. Some of my artwork has been featured on some independent label album covers, sometimes with permission, sometimes not.

[athletics] i grew up playing tennis, i was the captain of my high school team, and i taught tennis during high school and college. i still play occasionally when i get the chance and the weather permits. recently i have been playing much more squash. i started playing a few years ago, and for the past year or so i have been playing a lot and getting pretty decent. i have also been known to do an occasional 5k run or play any of a dozen other sports, albeit somewhat poorly. i have recently taken up ice hockey, and i just love playing. i'm terrible, but that doesn't bother me. it's an amazing feeling to be out on the ice playing a sport (and no, curling doesn't count), it's unlike anything else i've done before.

[family] i was born in New Haven, CT where i would later spend 4 years earning my Bachelor's Degree. i lived in West Haven, CT until i was about 5 years old, but i don't remember much more than some superman pajamas, a guy named Emmet, and the beach. Next we lived in Hamden CT, a suburb of New Haven. i'm the second child of four in a great family. There's 6 of us in all, Dad, Mom, Tom7, me, Taylor, and Kerrigan. Everyone gets along really well and we always get together for at least Thanksgiving and X-mas.

[music] music has always been an important part of my life, some of my first memories are of playing the violin and the cello. since giving up the classical instruments at age 11 i concentrated on singing for a while, in the CT state chorus and in my first rock band in high school. we frequented a professional studio and put out a couple of amateurish records. i taught myself guitar at the end of high school so that i could write songs for the band.

after the band split up in my freshman year of college i began to play more and more guitar and formed a joke band with my college roommates called TKS. we made offensive terrible music, but we gained a loyal following of at least 4 fans. also during this time i began writing and recording solo material which was mostly created from fictional situations or exaggerations of cheesy love songs, but ended up somewhat real songs. I still write/record whenever i'm feeling inspired. at this time i started a musical collaboration with my friend dave. we played rock songs which you can find on my audio page. this was more of a project than band since we never performed live.

My greatest musical accomplishment is certaily my rock epic Nintendo Power. It's an 18 minute mix of the most rockin NES music, with drums and guitars overlayed to give it a little more kick. It's even got a little acapella part in there.

[photography] i bought a Canon Digital Rebel in 2004 to take some fancy artistic-type photos. In 2008 I purchased Canon 40D. you can see some of my work on my photography page, or even more on my flickr page. I've gotten really into photography recently, and exhausted my grad student stipend on gear. I joined the photo staff at CMU's The Tartan in 2007 to stretch my photography legs a little. A couple of my photos have even been in magazines, ads, posters, etc., but mostly people steal them for backgrounds on their myspace pages.