I grew up in Fallbrook, California where I was primarily educated at home, teaching myself mathematics and performing as a professional violinist. As an undergraduate at Princeton, I studied mathematics, with interests also in chemistry, molecular biology, classics, and music. I graduated as valedictorian of the Princeton University class of 2002 with a BA in mathematics.

I spent two years as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where I studied number theory with Roger Heath-Brown. I graduated from Oxford in 2004 with a Masters of Science by Research, with a thesis on bounding the 3-part of class numbers of quadratic fields.

After Oxford, I became a graduate student at Princeton University, where I was funded by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, a Princeton University Centennial Fellowship, and the 250th Anniversary Fund for Innovation in Undergraduate Education. In 2009 I received my PhD, with a thesis advised by Elias M. Stein on discrete analogues in harmonic analysis.

I am currently a Member at the Institute for Advanced Study, and am participating in the special year on analytic number theory, funded by the Simonyi Fund and a National Science Foundation Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Fellowship. In 2010-2012 I will be a Marie Curie International Fellow at Oxford.

I am married to Tobias Overath, a neuroscientist.