Inspiration.
Through Sound.

When sound radiated from my first loudspeaker I had built, I knew that I wanted to become an acoustic engineer. Growing up in a small town in upstate New York, there was not much to do other than run around the front or back lawn, and play with farm animals. Sports are how people in my generation socialized so basketball, football, soccer, baseball, you name it, defines a large portion of my childhood. Additionally, at school, I was also involved with music, but did not think much of it. However, by the end of middle school I was infatuated by electronic dance music. Trying to understand this curiosity, I became a DJ in high school, and decided to construct my own loudspeaker. Fast forward a few years, my desire to understand sound and the music I listened to guided me to my degree in audio and music engineering, research on loudspeakers, an internship at Apple, a Fulbright Scholarship, several teaching assistantships and designing my own audio engineering course, and now my Ph.D. at Duke University. Ironically, even years later, I still find myself pondering those same questions I asked myself when I built my first speaker.