For a quick biographical sketch, you can glance at a CV (circa 2007) here. A few highlights, as they pertain to things I like to write about:

Science: Before becoming a journalist, I did a PhD in semiconductor physics at the University of Cambridge, and then spent a few years as a postdoctoral researcher with the U.S. National Security Agency, working on quantum computing and nano-mechanics. With a few notable exceptions (like this one), I don’t tend to write directly about the things I researched, but I certainly value the scientific literacy and perspective that I gained in those years.

Sports: I competed seriously for many years as a middle-distance runner, and ending up running on the Canadian national team in competitions around the world. I more or less retired from serious competition after the 2004 Olympic Trials (I didn’t make it), but I remain deeply involved in the sport. As well as informing stories like this one (which won a National Newspaper Award in 2007), those experiences have planted an enduring interest in the issues that surround amateur sport – funding and drugs, for example.

Music: I’ve been playing jazz saxophone for more than twenty years now, but in the tradition of armchair critics everywhere, I’m a better student of the music than I am a player. I’ve had the pleasure of covering the Ottawa International Jazz Festival for the past four years, and I’ve come to enjoy the frantic challenge of crafting a thoughtful review that has to be filed by the time the show ends, as well as the harder but more rewarding task of speaking to artists about their work. And of course, if you have a wedding, party or bar mitzvah that needs a band, that’s even better.

On the biographical side, I was born in Toronto in 1975 and grew up there, headed to Montreal for university, then lived in England, Maryland (suburban Washington, D.C., actually), New York and Ottawa before returning to Toronto in 2006.