Jake was born and raised in Dallas, Texas. He obtained his B.S. and M.S. in Chemistry from the College of William and Mary in the spring of 2023 and 2024. During his undergraduate and master’s studies, he worked under Prof. Christopher Ablet in the synthesis of novel dimethylaminonapthalene fluorophores for the determination of planar/twisted intramolecular charge-transfer mechanisms in the photoexcitation of Prodan dyes. He also worked in the synthesis of conjugate-acceptor dimethylaminonapthalene fluorophores for use in protein-tagging to study the denaturation dynamics of human serum albumin.