Early Life
Tomas was born on Earth in the Helsinki city region of his father's native Finland. Tomas was an only child, a source of sadness for his parents. Just before his sixth birthday his mother, a renowned botanist, accepted a professorship at Oslo University. His father's work kept him away from home for large parts of Tomas' youth so he was raised by his mother on a day-to-day basis. As a result Tomas grew up in an academic environment, surrounded by his mothers research.
When his father was at home it was often for a couple of months at a time, and he would always take his young son camping in the woods for a few weeks. To escape the pressures of his father's career they took no technology with them on these camping trips, and lived as primitively as possible. On these early trips he taught his son bushcraft, survival skills and how to live off the land. His fatherly teaching inspired Tomas' lifelong passion for practicing these techniques and studying how historic cultures lived, survived and thrived without 24th century technology.
Given his uprining no one was surprise when Tomas began researching primitive methods of survival and bushcraft on his own. Each time his father returned they would excitedly head into the woods to put his research into practice. His mother joined them when as often as she was able, helping the young Tomas understand which plants had nutritional or medicinal value.
Academic Research
Tomas continued to follow his childhood passion and enrolled at Oslo University to study the anthropology and archaeology of pre-warp cultures. For his final dissertation he undertook a "living archaeology" experiment for a year, where he recreated living as a 17th century explorer of Earth's North American continent. His documented experiences earned his thesis top marks and after graduating his professors encouraged him to continue his academic studies.
After a couple of months thought Tomas decided to take a break from University. He wanted to complete more living archaeology experiments, this time inspired by how other pre-warp races had survived on their own planets. He initially asked his father if any of his contacts had opportunities for him to get the off-world experience he needed to join one of the civilian science missions. His father suggest Starfleet, with it's mission of exploration, would likely be a better fit than his commerce focused contacts. Heeding his advice Tomas had originally intended to enlist in Starfleet and serve a single tour to get the required experience. It was his mother, in her gentle way, that persuaded Tomas to go to the academy. She pointed out that Tomas would get more opportunities to follow his passion in Starfleet that way, plus she didn’t think he'd be very happy scrubbing conduits and fixing replicators for four years.
Starfleet Academy
Tomas entered the Academy (Full Transcript) on 239409.21 and graduated 239807.20. He chose courses that would expand on his existing interests and ultimately majored in science, spcialising in Anthropology and Archaeology, Botany, Zoology and Planetary Science. Unsurprisingly he was the among the best in his class for his specialism’s but he struggled with other aspects, such as Astrophysics, which he barely passed. Tomas also took elective survival classes from the security program and surprised his instructors when he topped the class in land based survival, a testament to his childhood passion. At their encouragement, he took the additional modules needed to minor in security and round out his skill set.
Masters Degree
Tomas hopes to carry on researching for his Masters Degree whilst serving in Starfleet. He intends to ask Captain Oddas about this when he has been aboard the ship long enough to prove himself.
