Eben grew up smelling dead people.
His father owns a fourth generation funeral home in rural Maine and it seemed that his career path was set before he was conceived. Unfortunately for the perpetuation of the family business, there were two main reasons he was never cut out to be a funeral director.
First, he was born without the set of genes for comforting strangers in times of sorrow. Second, the linear arrangement of nucleic acid residues responsible for his “sorrow deficit” somehow facilitates an allergic reaction to the ubiquitous thin veneer of sympathy flower pollen always covering everything in the family business.
;)
While the full etiology of the disease has never been scientifically validated, the combined phenotype quickly curtailed his funeral directing ambitions. Thankfully, his father recognized his shortcomings at an early age and encouraged him to pursue his other passions. Consequently, in his senior year of high school, Eben drew pictures on his AP calculus test thinking he was done with math.
Somewhere in there is a story that should tell you much of what you need to know about him.
In 2004, Eben received a B.S. from Northeastern University where he was elected President of the Northeastern University Research On Neuroscience (NeURoNs) group and yes, he does know how geeky that sounds.
In 2007 — despite turning in a mediocre thesis on the effect of gradient biomaterial microenvironments on neural stem cell differentiation — Eben was kindly awarded an M.S. in biomedical engineering (good thing he gave up on math in 12th grade) from the prestigious Boston University.
In 2009, Eben will commence the final phase of his formal education with a joint, part-time JD/MBA from Suffolk University, the only institution granting them within driving distance of his place of residence.
Past lives have found Eben toiling as a maintenance man at a low income housing project, orange vest wearing Home Depot Lumber Associate, Scientist, blogger and freelance photographer.
He is currently paying the bills by working for a company in the pharmaceutical development arena but is always interested in looking for work doing anything that requires intelligence and solving problems. Someday he hopes to ink multibillion dollar life science deals and drink from the keg of glory.
Eben currently does most of what he does in front of a Mac in greater metropolitan Boston, Massachusetts; where the climate is usually damp, cold and there are no decent burritos.
