He received his B.S. in Animal Bioscience from Penn State University in 1981 and his PhD in Parasitology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1991. Dr. Hawdon received post-doctoral training at Yale University, and was a member of the Research Faculty in the Department of Public Health at Yale until appointed to the faculty of George Washington University in 2001. He has spent his entire academic career studying hookworms, and has done pioneering research in the molecular biology of hookworm infection and hookworm population genetics. He first encountered biogas technology during travels in rural China, and has long been a proponent of sanitation-based solutions to worm infections.