He has bachelor's degrees in both Chemical Engineering and Biology from MIT, and a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, where he focused on engineering viral vectors for gene therapy. In post-doctoral studies he became interested in systems biology and gene regulation. His current research interests are combining experiments and modeling to better understand and engineer the dynamics of eukaryotic gene regulation and simple regulatory networks, using budding yeast as a model organism. His group also explores methods to translate these fundamental studies into tools for rapidly creating phenotypic diersity in microorganisms.