I was born French Canadian, Montreal to be exact, in 1975. My family moved to San Antonio in '78, so I grew up in the good old Texas public school system while spending my summers as a kid back in Quebec (which I still do when I can). I graduated from Texas Tech University in 1997 and realized that I liked Cell Biology, so I got lucky and ended up as a Research Assistant in an insulin signalling lab that Fall, all of which led me to a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. I met my boss, Larry Mandarino, when he interviewed me for grad school and we both left UTHSCSA for Arizona State University together in 2005, him as the Chair of Kinesiology (a department that went bye-bye), me as a Post-Doctoral Fellow. Spent too long there before taking an Assistant Professor position at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona in 2012. Realized pretty quickly that Mayo held no future for me, so we all ended up at the University of Arizona College of Medicine in the Fall of 2016, which turned out to be where we should have started in Arizona in the first place. Love the UA, so good to be back at a health science center and an institution that has a passion for basic biomedical research.
I started my career as a scientist in an era where radiation was the main approach to study protein phosphorylation (this was '97, the internet had just come out and I don't even know if I had an email address, I don't think so). Luckily for me, I met the right people and got an early introduction to mass spectrometry. As a result, my training incorporated basic molecular biology, traditional signaling techniques, microscopy, and eventually mass spectrometry and proteomics. During this scientific journey, I became self-proficient as an end user capable of running mass spectrometers to study proteins. This led to a lot of collaboration, so much so, that we developed numerous proteomics facilities, all of which cumulated to the creation of the University of Arizona College of Medicine Quantitative Proteomics Laboratory, a resource we have designed to offer UA investigators a chance to use quantitative proteomics to answer their own personal research questions.
I am fortunate enough to have a very loving family, a power trio, with my wife Leah, and our daughter Sophia. I enjoy spending time with the girls and watching Sophia turn into a beautiful little maniac. I also get my kicks playing music, SH*TLOADS OF GOLF, listening to music, reading, fishing, snorkeling, exercising, being outdoors, watching movies, barbequing, eating cheeseburges and french fries and chocolate, drinking whatever is being offered to me, and laughing at my idiot friends while I too act like a 14-year old moron. I also like winning money from said friends, the holidays with my family, October, and decorating my house during Halloween in a way that scares little kids so much they end up too afraid to grab the candy and I get all the chocolate.