His research focuses on modeling complex systems in the context of empirical data. He holds a PhD from the University of Maryland School of Public Policy where he explored agent-based modeling as a tool for policy analysis. He has been a research scholar at CISSM, a visiting scholar at the Brookings Institution's Center for Social and Economic Dynamics (CSED) and attended the Santa Fe Institute's Complex Systems Summer School. During the 1990s he was the technical director of the GIS program for Westchester County, New York. His interests include the quantitative study of conflict dynamics, modeling adaptation to a changing climate, understanding the human and economic flows driving changes in the global urban system, and the development of novel urban metrics based on nighttime lights.