Stirling graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2019 with a degree in Neuroscience, after which he earned his Master’s of Science in Clinical and Therapeutic Neuroscience from the University of Oxford. As a student, his research and academic interests came together in the study of mood and thought disorder psychopathology and emergent alternative and adjunctive treatments.

Stirling returned to Philadelphia to join Dr. Ran Barzilay’s lab as a clinical research coordinator, where the focus of study is developmental stress and the factors that contribute to either patient susceptibility or resilience, after which he plans to pursue the path of an M.D., Ph.D. focused on psychiatry and clinical neuroscience.