Troy received his B.S. in Biological Sciences from Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, where he first discovered his passion for regenerative biology and cell fate. After beginning his research career studying mitophagy and the mitochondrial bottleneck in Drosophila, he moved downstate to pursue a PhD in Genetics and Development at Columbia University in 2019. There, he worked to establish the zebrafish as a novel model for scar-free ligament regeneration as the first graduate student mentored by Dr. Joanna Smeeton. In 2022, Troy was awarded the NIH Predoctoral Individual National Research Service Award (F31), which supported his research. Through his doctoral work, he characterized the dedifferentiation of zebrafish ligamentocytes to a regenerative non-developmental progenitor state and identified common transcriptional programs of dedifferentiated fibroblasts across regenerating tissues.
 
Troy began his postdoctoral work in the Naik lab in October 2025, where he now works to build computational, translational, and mouse models to uncover the drivers of fibrosis in chronic inflammation. Ultimately, he hopes to establish his own independent research program to restore the capacity for regeneration lost in mammalian evolution.
 
Beyond research, Troy aims to continue mentorship in and out of the lab through educational outreach programs with local schools and court-involved youth. Among his other interests are 1920s jazz saxophone, baking, and homebrewing (or extracurricular yeast biology).