Eli Sanchez grew up in Smithville, a small town roughly midway between Houston and Austin Texas. He received his bachelor’s degree in Chemistry with a minor in Physics from the University of Texas at Dallas. He then worked for a year at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where he used computational models to study the effects of radiation exposure on the human body, before beginning his PhD in the Nuclear Science and Engineering Department at MIT. His doctoral research assessed the implications of hypersonic boost-glide weapons for great power strategic stability. He is now a postdoctoral Nuclear Security Fellow at the Security Studies Program at MIT where he studies the potential for emerging technologies to increase the vulnerability of ballistic missile submarines.