Grayson grew up in Minnesota and Pennsylvania, and enjoyed camping around the country and fishing with his family as a kid. In 2010, he graduated from Lafayette College with a B.S. in Neuroscience. In 2016, he graduated from the University of Rochester with a Ph.D. in Neurobiology and Anatomy while working under Dr. Ania Majewska. He then worked as a postdoctoral fellow and research scientist at MIT in the laboratory of Dr. Mriganka Sur. He started his lab in the Department of Biology at Penn State in 2023. Outside of work, Gray enjoys diverse music, spaghetti westerns, basic woodworking, amateur leatherworking, computer/board games, bourbon/ craft beer, fishing/ hiking, the smell of campfire smoke, and eastern white pines.