Trevor was born and raised in San Diego, California where he attended two years of community college at San Diego Mesa College before transferring to Cal Poly SLO and obtaining his bachelor's degree in chemistry. At Cal Poly, he worked under Dr. Daniel Bercovici on the synthesis of ylidenenorbornadienes (YNDs) and studying their subsequent retro-Diels-Alder fragmentation rates using NMR analysis. During this time, he was voted "least likely to die in a lab accident" by his peers. Trevor has had a love for chemistry since high school and became interested in a PhD after his time in the lab at Cal Poly.