His research interests focus on developing synthetic biology techniques photosynthetic microorganisms to enhance bioenergy production. Recent research has focused on developing genome editing tools for diatoms, yeast-based DNA assembly methods to clone prokaryotic and eukaryotic chromosomes and engineering cyanobacterial strains with improved hydrogen production capabilities. Before coming to JCVI, Phil was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Missouri — St. Louis where he studied hydrogen production in nitrogen fixing cyanobacteria. Phil earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis in Plant Pathology.