He received Psychology degrees from Yale University (B.A.) and Carnegie Mellon University (Ph.D.), where he studied Cognitive Neuroscience through the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition. Before joining the faculty at Virginia Tech, he trained as a postdoc in the Group for Action and Perception at the University of Western Ontario, and in the Human Cognitive Neurophysiology Laboratory at the Veterans Affairs Northern California Medical Center in Martinez, CA.