He received his B.S. from UCLA and earned his M.D., Ph.D. in Immunology from Washington University. Following postdoctoral work at UCSF, he joined the faculty of UCSD, where he has served on faculty since 2006. His laboratory investigates genetic and developmental mechanisms of human phenotypic variation and has been investigating new methods and experimental models to study this problem. His laboratory utilizes high-throughput sequencing based approaches to uncover regulatory differences in gene expression and enhancer activity. These approaches are leading to new insights in genomic variation and to advances in RNA-based diagnostics.