Dr. Andy Mitchell was born and raised in Irvine, California. He developed a love for chemistry thanks to an excellent high school teacher, and he decided to enroll at the University of California, San Diego (Revelle College) as a chemistry major. While at UCSD, he stumbled into a computational chemistry lab and began doing part-time research; this led to his discovery of coding and, eventually, to a double major in both chemistry and applied mathematics. Immediately after graduating, he married his high school sweetheart before they both began graduate programs at Stanford University. Dr. Mitchell’s Ph.D research focused on computer simulations of small molecules and proteins related to neurodegenerative disease; his wife (also Dr. Mitchell) studied neural plasticity in new and struggling readers. During their time at Stanford, the Mitchells adopted a dog, Baloo, who, by association, has earned two ‘dogtorates’. Dr. Mitchell spent many years at Stanford teaching and developing undergraduate courses in chemistry, and came to love teaching more than his academic research. He’s excited to engage with the bright young minds in his math and science classes at York School. When he’s not lesson planning or zoned-out thinking about abstract math problems, he can be found spending time with his wife and dog, watching Dodger baseball, playing the piano, or indulging in his childhood love of video gaming. |
