About Me:
Although my given name is David, I go by my middle name name "Shea". I grew up always being called Shea, and it seems to have stuck. My wife, Monica, and I currently reside in Philadelphia with our family's newest addition, Austin.
I was born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico. My parents are David and Roxy Vick, and Lynn Shoemaker. All three of my parents live in Albuquerque. My father is a former ER doctor turned software consultant working with the University of New Mexico. Basically he plays around with robots all day long and somehow gets paid to do it. My stepmother Roxy is a pharmacist who recently started working for Albertsons. My mother is an educator. She specializes in special education and biology. She lives with her boyfriend, Chuck Sutton, who's an expert trials rider.
I was a secondary school student at El Dorado High School. In 2000 I graduated and started my undergraduate career at the University of New Mexico. In 2004 I graduated from Rice University with a B.A. in mathematics. After graduating from Rice, I enrolled as a graduate student in mathematics the University of Pennsylvania. I received my Ph.D. in mathematics May 2009 and began work as an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow here at Columbia.
