He earned his B.Sc. degree in Biology in 1981 and his M.Sc. in Cellular Biology in 1984 at the Agricultural University in Wageningen, the Netherlands. He obtained a Ph.D. in Microbiology at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in 1993 after which he pursued a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and joined the faculty there in 2000 as a Research Assistant Professor. He moved to Auburn in 2004 where his research is focused on mucosal immunology and he is active in the training of graduate and professional students.