I spent most of my childhood in Phoenix, Arizona, leaving to attend Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, where I received both my undergraduate and medical degrees. During my undergraduate work, I had the opportunity to join a bench research laboratory at the University of Nebraska Medical Center investigating the effects of organophosphate poisons on cholinesterase signaling in the nervous system. This experience both stimulated my passion for medical research and served as an introduction to the mechanics of being a part of and, through observation of the investigators, running a laboratory.

After completing medical school, I returned to Phoenix for pediatric residency at Phoenix Children’s Hospital where I stayed for a fourth year as a chief resident. During residency, I met and married my wife, and we had our first daughter six weeks before leaving for Seattle to begin my fellowship in neonatal-perinatal medicine at the University of Washington. Fellowship brought several new adventures into my life, including our second daughter and the opportunity to return to my research roots. Upon entering fellowship, I was very interested in hemodynamics and pulmonary mechanics, but I was ultimately drawn to a project with two amazing mentors, Drs. Sandra Juul and Pierre Mourad. This project brought me back to the brain, assessing cerebral blood flow in preterm infants and led to a follow-up study in term hypoxic-ischemic brain injury. This subsequent project started me on the research path that I continue today.

Since moving back to Omaha in 2016 to join Children’s Hospital & Medical Center and the University of Nebraska Medical Center as faculty, I have continued to benefit from fantastic mentorship by a number of different investigators. My mentors have supported my continued research education culminating in receiving my Ph.D. in December 2021, my perpetual development as a clinician, and the de novo establishment of a newborn brain injury research program including both bench and clinical investigation.

Although indirect and sometimes circuitous, my career in research thus far has always followed in the direction of passion and inspiration. My advice for others on the same journey is that there is no end to the number of questions that can be asked in medicine, so find a mentor (or more likely multiple mentors) who will allow freedom in your path, seek out a question that you can’t stop thinking about, and pursue it.