Per Sebastian Skardal began his academic career as an undergraduate at Boston College, where he studied mathematic and computer science. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Colorado at Boulder, specializing in nonlinear dynamics, stochastic processes and complex networks. In particular, he began studying complexity and chaos in ensembles of nonlinear dynamical systems that interact in complex networks and other complex systems synchronization phenomena and spatiotemporal dynamics of cardiac tissue. He then moved to Barcelona, where he spent two years as a postdoctoral research fellow in Barcelona, continuing work in similar areas.