He received his Ph.D. degree from University of Hawaii at Manoa in 1998. He was the predoctoral and postdoctoral fellow of Geophysical Laboratory, Carnegie Institute of Washington. In 2000, he joined the Department of Geosciences at Princeton University as Research Associate. He became an Assistant Professor of Department of Earth Sciences, National Cheng Kung University in 2003. He was a Visiting Professor at Tohoku University in 2011 and a Visiting Scholar at Carnegie Institute of Washington in 2012.