Tristan Burton is entering his third season as an assistant coach at UCSD. During the 2009 season, he helped MPSF Coach of the Year Kevin Ring lead the team to a school-record eight MPSF wins and 13 overall. This season followed the then record-setting 2008 season for wins.

While Burton enjoys all aspects of coaching, he specializes in the application of physics and mathematics to the game of volleyball. At the 2009 AVCA Spring Conference, Burton presented a new statistical approach to analyze a volleyball match and also participated in the "Statistics: The Key to Good Coaching Decisions" session, on a panel that included Dr. Carl McGown and Dr. Gil Fellingham. He has published his statistics system in an article entitled, "A Comprehensive Statistics System for Volleyball Match Analysis" in the August/September 2009 edition of the AVCA's Coaching Volleyball, and has also made a number of scientific contributions to the Gold Medal Squared coaching theory.

Burton began coaching high school and juniors club volleyball in Northern California while in graduate school. Among his successes was leading the Castilleja School Girl's Varsity team to a 36-3 record in 2002. Upon completion of his degree, Burton took a position as an Assistant Professor at the U.S. Naval Academy and continued to coach at the collegiate and club levels. Under his direction, the 2006 Navy Men's Club Team finished in the gold bracket at the NIRSA Division I Sport Club Championship. Later that year, he was the assistant coach for the Morgan State University women's team, working alongside 2006 MEAC Coach of the Year Ramona Riley-Bozier and helping to lead the team to the finals of the MEAC Volleyball Championship.

At the juniors level, Burton has coached for TimeOut VBC in Baltimore, Quake City and City Beach volleyball clubs in the San Francisco Bay Area, and most recently with Coast VBC in San Diego. His 2003 City Beach 18-Green and 2005 TimeOut 15-Black teams each earned regional bids to the Junior Olympic Volleyball Championships.

Burton earned his B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Illinois in 1996, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering from Stanford University in 1997 and 2003.

In addition to coaching volleyball, Burton participates in endurance athletic events and has completed four Ironman distance triathlons and five marathons. He lives in the University Heights neighborhood of San Diego with his wife Melissa and son Atley.