He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley and his medical degree from New York Medical College. He then completed a general surgery internship at St. Vincent’s Hospital and Medical Center of New York, followed by a general surgery residency at The Massachusetts General Hospital of Harvard University. During this residency he also finished a two-year research fellowship in thoracic oncology at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. After his residency he pursed a cardiothoracic fellowship at the University of California at Davis followed by another fellowship in advanced and minimally invasive thoracic surgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.