Levin received a self-designed Bachelor's degree in Art and Design at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994, and a Master's degree in Media Arts and Sciences from the MIT Media Lab in 2000, as a student in John Maeda's Aesthetics and Computation Group (ACG).
After his graduate work at MIT, Levin taught computational design in various schools in New York City, including Columbia University, Cooper Union, and Parsons School of Design before accepting a position at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in 2004.