After receiving his baccalaureate in chemistry from Case Western Reserve University in 1990, he attended medical school at Washington University in St. Louis. During his medical training, he participated in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute-NIH Research Scholars program, where he worked with Drs. Patrick Hwu and Steven Rosenberg in the Surgery branch of the National Cancer Institute. His research examined the use of retroviral vectors to functionally redirect T lymphocytes to recognize tumor-specific antigens. He returned to medical school following this research training and received his medical degree from Washington University in St Louis in 1995.