Previously he was a Research Scientist in the Department of Biological Sciences at Purdue University. He received his Ph.D. in Solid State Physics at the University of Warsaw, Poland in 1978 and was a Visiting Professor at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, where he received the ASEA award for research work on the microcrystallization of metallic glasses. Since 1991 his research has focused on determining the crystallographic structure of macromolecules. He is a co-developer of the software program DENZO, used to process x-ray diffraction data.