Paul earned his PhD at Rutgers University where his research focused on insect phylogenomics. Previous to his current appointment at BYU, Paul worked as a Bioinformatics Analyst then as a Research Data Scientist at the Smithsonian Institution where, with Dr. Rebecca B. Dikow, he co-founded the Data Science Lab, an initiative to bring big data expertise into the Smithsonian. He remains a Research Associate of the Data Science Lab where he is involved in several projects concerning conservation genomics and big data.