He graduated with a double major in computer science and earth sciences from Dartmouth College (1995), and he received a Ph.D. in anthropology from Stanford University (2002). He was a postdoc in the Department of Zoology, University of Wisconsin, Madison (2003-2004), and the Human Evolution Department, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (2004-2006). He joined the UC Davis Anthropology Department in 2006.