Professor Demers earned a B.A. in Mathematics and English Literature at Amherst College. After teaching math and English in Chuuk, Micronesia, for 3 years as part of a Jesuit volunteer program, he returned to academics and earned his Ph.D. in Mathematics from the Courant Institute at New York University. He spent 3 years as a visiting professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology before joining the faculty at Fairfield University in 2006.