Mark was an undergraduate at UW, where he participated in Jim Morrow's REU and competed in the Mathematical Modeling Competition. He graduated with a BS in Math in 2003. That summer he was a TA for the first year of SIMUW. He then graduated with a PhD in 2009 from the University of California, Los Angeles. His research interests were in Algebraic Geometry, specifically in the field of Algebraic Groups. He then worked at the University of British Columbia as a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow. Outside of Mathematics, Mark enjoys riding bicycles, playing basketball, and hiking in the Cascades.