He leads a research group in bacterial pathogenomics at the School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences. He was awarded a PhD in Genetics from the University of Queensland for his work on Pseudomonas aeruginosa pathogenesis in 2002 and holds Masters degrees in Microbiology and Bioinformatics from the Universities of Otago and Manchester, respectively. Competitive fellowships from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 and MRC (UK) supported his postdoctoral study of bacterial genomics at the Universities of Oxford and Birmingham, UK, before he returned to Australia in 2006 as a NHMRC Howard Florey Fellow.