David received his PhD at the University of Pittsburgh in the Department of Neuroscience and the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition with Carl Olson.  

He completed his first postdoctoral position with Laura Peoples in the Department of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. 

He then moved to the Department of Neurosciences at the Medical University of South Carolina to work with Gary Aston-Jones as a postdoctoral fellow and then as a research assistant professor. 

He joined the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2014.