Early life

Gadd (August 25, 1957) was born into a Catholic family from Wellington Province, New Zealand in 1957. He moved to the United States in 1968 where he obtained a Bachelor of Engineering degree from the University of Texas at Arlington in 1984.[2]

After attending Lafayette Elementary and Alice Deal Junior High in the city, he was accepted to the private Sidwell Friends School on a partial scholarship and graduated in 1973.[3][4] He studied mechanical engineering at Cornell University (where he took an astronomy class taught by Carl Sagan)[5] and graduated with a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering in 1977.[6] He earned a Master's degree in 1983 at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD).