Eli grew up and attended college in Harrisonburg, Virginia, at a small liberal arts school called Eastern Mennonite University. There he majored in biochemistry and studied the neuronal basis for aging in fruit flies with Dr. Jeffrey Copeland. His big break came in the summer of 2016 when he earned an NSF-funded REU at Penn State, and spent the summer studying colloidal inorganic nanonsynthesis in the lab of Dr. Ray Schaak. After finishing up his Bachelors, he returned to Penn State to begin graduate studies in 2017, joining the joint bioinorganic lab of Marty Bollinger and Carsten Krebs. The bulk of his work since then has been to learn and then apply various kinetic, spectroscopic, and crystallographic methods to study the mechanism of the iron/2OG-dependent epoxidase H6H. Outside lab, Eli enjoys running, hanging out with his friends, and spending too much time watching cable news.