Brian (BL) studied chemistry as an undergraduate at North Georgia College & State University (now UNG) and completed his B.S. degree in 2003. During his undergraduate career, he conducted research under the guidance of Prof. Dan Thompson at UNG, and as a participant in Furman University's NSF-REU program where he worked in the research groups of Profs. John Wheeler and Noel A. P. Kane-Maguire. BL began his doctoral research at the University of Texas at Austin where he worked under the guidance of Prof. C. Grant Willson and was co-advised by Prof. Christopher W. Bielawski. After receiving his Ph.D. in 2009, BL pursued his postdoctoral studies at Cornell University under the supervision of Prof. Geoffrey W. Coates. BL then returned to the southeast as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of Tennessee - Knoxville (UTK) in 2011, and was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor with tenure in 2018. His research and teaching efforts have been recognized through the Ffrancon Williams Endowed Faculty Award, an Army Research Office Young Investigator Award, a Department of Energy Early Career Research Program Award, and he was recently named the Gleb Mamantov Associate Professor of Chemistry in 2020.