Though born in Boston, Scott Stevens grew up in a rainy Oregonian valley in the US Pacific Northwest, where he studied biology at the University of Oregon. He then moved to Munich, Germany on a Fulbright scholarship to work on marine biology and, later on, genetics at the Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universität and the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology. After finishing up a Ph.D. in comparative cognition at Cambridge University, he is looking for interdisciplinary work involving research, strategy, and writing.