After completing his Ph.D. at the University of Waterloo in the Department of Combinatorics and Optimization under the supervision of William H. Cunningham in 2003, he spent two years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow under the mentorship of Michel X. Goemans. In addition to discrete optimization, his current academic interests include designing and developing teaching tools and exploiting technology to help students attain mastery.