After graduating from the College of Charleston (South Carolina) with a B.A. in Biology, D. Michael Hallman worked for several years in a DuPont textile factory, then later as a research technician in a pharmacology laboratory at the Medical University of South Carolina. He then returned to school and earned a master’s degree in Epidemiology from the University of South Carolina and a Ph.D. in Human Genetics from the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston, Texas. Working as a genetic epidemiologist, he has held faculty positions at Tulane University and the University of Texas School of Public Health. He now lives in Houston with his wife, Sara, and nine rescue cats.