A.J. received his BS with honors in biology from Rhodes College in 1999. He attended graduate school at Vanderbilt University, where he studied the complex interactions of synaptic proteins in the laboratory of Dr. Roger Colbran. He received his Ph.D. in molecular physiology and biophysics in 2005, and then pursued short postdocs learning electrophysiology and mouse behavior with Dr. Danny Winder at Vanderbilt and with Dr. Tom Südhof at UT Southwestern in Dallas, Texas. In 2008, AJ joined the laboratory of Dr. Eric Nestler, then at UT Southwestern, and moved with the lab to the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. In the Nestler lab, AJ studied the transcriptional mechanisms of addiction and depression, further developing skills in molecular biology, biochemistry, electrophysiology, and mouse behavior. He joined Michigan State University in the Department of Physiology in 2013 and was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2019. AJ has been married to Michelle Mazei-Robison, also a Nestler postdoc and now an assistant professor at MSU, since 2002. They live in Okemos with their two children and enjoy cooking, sports, and talking incessantly about science.