Biography

I was born in Berkeley, California, in 1965. My parents are Mary and John Price, and they were living in Berkeley while my father was in graduate school in physics.

We (my parents, me, and my older brother Richard) moved to suburban Maryland when I was less than a year old.

I went to Prince George's County public schools until 5th grade. My friends when I was a wee lad in Lanham, Maryland included Ronnie Stone, Kenny Schmidt and Scott Hildebrick (sp?). I'd be happy to hear from any of those people.

At the end of 5th grade, we moved to Montgomery County, Maryland. I went to White Oak Junior High (1976-78), then to Sandy Spring Friends School for 9th grade (78-79), then to Springbrook High School (79-82). Friends in this period included Andrew Gelman, Harvey Wong, Ken Whang, and Craig Warsaw (like a lot of teenagers, we used to play Dungeons and Dragons together). I still talk to Andrew regularly, we frequently exchange email, and we see each other several times a year; Craig and I exchange occasional emails or cards; but I seem to have lost touch with Harvey and Ken.

I went to Oberlin College in Ohio (1982-86), a small liberal arts school most famous for its music conservatory. I did a double major in physics and math, though the math major was really incidental. I also played a lot of Ultimate Frisbee. Friends at Oberlin included then-girlfriend Thea Lawton, Eric Loew, Mark Alexander, Fred Dulles, Bob Cannon, and Janet Zwick.

After Oberlin I took the path of least resistance: Grad school. I went to the University of Kentucky (1986-92), where I got a Ph.D. in physics (with a dissertation on Rydberg atoms in strong, linearly increasing electric fields) under advisor David Harmin. I continued to play a lot of Ultimate Frisbee.

Following grad school, I took a post-doc at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (recently renamed Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory*) in the Indoor Environment Program. After the three-year post-doc ended, I was given a quasi-permanent position (official title: "scientist"), which will last as long as I keep getting grant money. I have worked on predicting and mapping indoor radon concentrations in the U.S.; on mapping gas concentrations using optical remote sensing; on predicting chemical properties of mixtures of combustion gases; on predicting and improving commercial building energy efficiency; and on various aspects of statistical modeling. You can see more on my work page.

I live with my wife in a nice house in North Berkeley.