He graduated from Macquarie with a PhD in chemistry in 1994 and moved to the USA for postdoctoral studies at Rockefeller University in New York and University of Washington in Seattle. After three years as a principal scientist at the Torrey Mesa Research Institute in San Diego, he moved to Tucson, Arizona and took up an appointment as a research Associate Professor in Biochemistry at the University of Arizona. He returned to Australia in 2006 with a Biofirst Fellowship from the NSW Office of Science and Medical Research which enabled him to take up his current appointment. Has research interests are in protein mass spectrometry, quantitative proteomics and plant and environmental proteomics.