Eric was born in New Jersey (or for Joe Piscopo fans: "Joisey", Exit 19 off the Turnpike) in November 1960. Although he had always been interested in math and science, having a great high school Physics teacher really helped him clarify what he was going to be. He met his wife, Christine Gallant, in high school, and they were married in 1984. Eric and his wife have a four-year-old, Stephen. No pets at the moment--Stephen keeps them busy enough!

Eric did his undergraduate work at University of Pennsylvania (not Penn State!) in Philadelphia and got his start doing cosmic ray research at the Homestake Deep Underground Muon and Neutrino Detector. He graduated from Penn in 1982 with an Honors major in Physics, another major in Astronomy, and a minor in Computer Science. Graduate work took him to the California Institute of Technology in sunny Pasadena. There he worked in the Space Radiation Laboratory with Dr. Edward Stone as his thesis advisor. His research focused on balloon-borne cosmic ray experiments and the Cosmic Ray Subsystem of the Voyager deep space probes. His thesis presented the first firm "Evidence for Anomalous Cosmic Ray Hydrogen", and he graduated in 1989.

Ever since then, he's been at NASA-Goddard in the High Energy Cosmic Ray group, working on various balloon-borne and spacecraft instruments. Recently, the majority of his time has been spent as Deputy Project Scientist on the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) which launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida on a Delta II rocket in August 1997. Observations from ACE will help scientists understand what elements and what isotopes matter is made of and where the elements came from.