He works on topics in machine learning and natural language processing, including constructing timelines from unstructured text, building information extraction models for clinical narratives, and applying machine learning to educational applications. He previously received a joint Ph.D. in Computer Science and Cognitive Science from the University of Colorado in 2007, and worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University's Natural Language Processing group, Johns Hopkins University's Human Language Technology Center of Excellence, KULeuven's Language Intelligence and Information Retrieval group in Belgium, and the University of Colorado's Center for Language and Education Research.