In high school, Phil took his first psychology course, an introduction to what would become a long-term fascination with the brain. Ever since hearing about that spongy mass of electricity and chaos, he was interested in knowing how the brain is organized and how it works. Working at the Mind Research Network, a premier brain imaging institute, offered Phil his first interaction with magnetic resonance imaging. He witnessed each slice of the brain being recreated before his eyes and knew that a career in neuroscience was in his future. In the spring of 2009, Philip received the Career Opportunities in Research scholarship sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health. As part of this scholarship, Phil completed an honors thesis project in the Department of Neuroscience studying the effects of fetal alcohol exposure on brain chemistry. When he isn't at the lab, Phil enjoys backpacking, bicycling, and playing the blues.

Phil spent the summer at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory working in Dr. Partha Mitra's lab, which allowed for a unique insight into the intersection between biology, engineering, and technology. The project he worked on sought to trace neuronal pathways in post-mortem sheep, bovine, and human brains. Phil’s particular contribution was to help standardize and optimize the processing of tissue samples; brains were injected and run on a custom apparatus designed by the lab and then were sliced and imaged.

Phil graduated and spent the summer researching the effects of prenatal ethanol exposure on specific protein receptor levels in the mouse brain. He is currently working for the NIH in Bethesda, MD in the lab of Dr. Sriram Subramaniam.