Chris Theissen is a father, husband, mentor, observational astronomer, and data scientist. Also a minority scientist born of Peruvian and German descent.

I grew up in the sunny climes of San Diego, and began thinking about a career as an (astro)physicist after sitting in on introductory physics classes at Stanford while my wife (then girlfriend) was an undergraduate there. At the time I was working as a mechanic and appreciating the precision of machined parts, and I started realizing the world around us was also built with precision. I remember seeing the Hubble Deep Field for the first time in Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, and began tearing up at the thought of how small and unique we all are on this blue marble spinning through the infinite cosmos. That was when I decided to pursue astronomy.