Max began his studies in Psychology at the beginning of his freshman year at Oberlin College. After taking an introductory course and declaring a psychology major, he began to take a specific interest in merging his interests in computer interfaces and psychology, delving into articles on such subjects as cognitive science, psychometrics, and human computer interaction. In the fall of 2017, he was added to an undergraduate research project at Oberlin run by Professor Nancy Darling. It was at this point, under professor Darling’s mentor ship that Max began his studies in dynamic systems modeling as the project aimed to develop a model of chronic pain to help educate the public in systems thinking and the nature of pain and functionality.

By his third year, Max had begun his own research into computational modeling, mixing together dynamic systems and neural network approaches to tackle more complex modeling scenarios. His undergraduate research project blossomed into 1step2life, a startup born at LaunchU 2019 (Oberlin’s own startup incubator) with the goal of helping the 5% of US teens with chronic pain take back their lives. He continues his research under Nancy Darling, with additional mentorship from Keith Downing and Paul Thibodeau.