He obtained his Ph.D. from the department of Physics at Columbia University in 1992, working on problems of convective stability in fluid systems relevant to stars. He has since worked on a broad range of problems in fluid mechanics including turbulence, laser/plasma systems and combustion at Stanford University, Los Alamos National Laboratory and at Sandia National Laboratory (California). In addition to combustion and turbulence, his current research includes the application of fluid mechanics to an emerging area of technology -- the microfluid mechanics of bioanalytical systems.