He received his Ph.D. (2004) in the Medical Sciences with the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Calgary, where his research centered on the mineral binding effects of the bisphosphonate drug family during the pathogenesis of Osteoarthritis. He completed his initial Postdoctoral Fellowship in Drug Delivery under the supervision of Professor Hasan Uludag at the University of Alberta, followed by an Industrial Fellowship with the Canadian biotech company Millenium Biologix Corporation Biologics Division labs in Mississauga, where he worked as part of a team developing conjugative strategies to effectively dope biomaterial surfaces with bioactive peptide biologics, before his academic recruitment to the University of Alberta.