He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1998, and the M.A. from the Ohio State University in 1990. He is the author of Secret Weapons & World War II: Japan in the Shadow of Big Science (University Press of Kansas, 2005), as well as articles focusing on nuclear weapons history. He has been awarded research grants from the Social Science Research Council, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, the Association for Asian Studies Northeast Asia Council, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Center for Japanese Studies at the University of Michigan. He was a visiting scholar in residence at the Tokyo Institute of Technology in 2001-2002.