Hauber was born and raised in Hungary. He has said that he always wanted to become an ornithologist. He attended high school in Italy, before moving to the United States for college. Hauber was an undergraduate student at Yale University, where he majored in organismal biology. He started focusing on birds, and the differences between the brains of different species. He worked toward his doctorate at the Cornell University, where he studied brood parasitic cowbirds. After graduating, Hauber moved to the University of California, Berkeley as a postdoctoral research fellow.
