Stephan was born on October 25th, 1989 at the Pleasant Valley Hospital in Camarillo, California. It’s been all downhill from there (but I have a cat now, so that’s cool).
He grew up in Haymarket Virginia, attending Mountain View Elementary School, then Stonewall Jackson Middle and High School (now Unity Braxton Middle School and Unity Reed High School), where he graduated with an International Baccalaureate degree before going to Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology to pursue his Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering (but mostly play intramurals and division 3 tennis).
Next stop was San Antonio, where he worked in the connected/autonomous vehicles group at Southwest Research Institute, working on commercial and military autonomous vehicles, including leading the development of “Big Red“, an autonomous class VIII truck. While here, he obtained a master’s degree in Applied Mathematics/Industrial Mathematics from the University of Texas at San Antonio. He further began his performing arts career, with several performances with Performing Arts San Antonio, and one with The Opera San Antonio.
After that, Stephan moved to Michigan, where he is a Ph.D. Candidate in the robotics program at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, working under Professor Jason J. Corso. His work is described more thoroughly on his personal page. He has also performed in a number of shows with the University of Michigan Gilbert and Sullivan Society. His free time since the pandemic began has mostly been spent playing guitar and throwing plastic circles.