I was raised in a small mountain town in New Hampshire, spending most of my time outdoors or reading books. My family was nominally Christian; faith did not play a meaningful role in my life beyond sometimes going to church and wanting to be a good person. As a result, my identity became wrapped up in grades and moralistic performance, making me increasingly stressed and self-righteous. By the grace of God, as a sophomore in college I was invited to a student Bible study on the book of Romans. Having never actually read the Bible before, I was stunned by the Gospel message. By Romans 3, I realized that I had never truly understood the unbearable weight of my own sin, nor the unconditional grace and acceptance offered by Christ regardless of my performance. This led to a dramatic conversion experience and I have been a Jesus follower ever since. In graduate school, I fell in love with research when I realized that my yearnings for adventure and creative thinking could be fused with my scientific training. In 2014 I joined Virginia Tech, where I run the Nature-Inspired Fluids & Interfaces laboratory. Most of my group's work involves imagining fresh ways to observe nature-inspired material systems, discover novel phenomena that nobody has ever seen before, and then devise new inventions that exploit what we learn. I see all of this as a gift from God: He created the natural world and the elegant laws that operate on it, and scientists are simply reverse-engineering this created order piece by piece, with much awe and wonder. My wife, Shanda, and I are proud parents of five vibrant children. Learning how to lead and care for a seven-person family, while simultaneously mentoring dozens of students, is a never-boring odyssey. It has certainly helped me to rely more on Christ, as the level of sanctification and humility required was not something I could manage on my own strength. At work, my goal is to truly care about each student and to challenge them to reach their full potential while still nurturing their sense of joy and wonder. I am also highly involved in Virginia Tech's Bradley Study Center, which is a Christian study center where faculty and students learn together how to cultivate and leverage our faith in the midst of academic activities.