Thomas is a former crew-member of the Indiana Clean Lakes Program. He operated the Limnology laboratory's auto-analyzer in addition to other field and laboratory analyses. Thomas also worked in Adam Ward's hydrology lab where he studied solute transport modeling in streams. Thomas graduated from DePauw University in 2016 with a B.A. in Physics and in December 2018 with M.P.A. and M.S.E.S. degrees in Water Management from Indiana University. When not in one lab or the other, Thomas spent his free time reading about urban design, playing board games and/or canoe camping.