He has a particular interest in vascular diseases, post-infectious inflammatory disorders, and autoimmune manifestations of immune deficiency. He studied biochemistry at Harvard University, and completed the MD and PhD degrees at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital in Houston. His graduate work involved studying the initiation of immune responses in a group of children with leukocyte adhesion deficiency. He completed rheumatology training at Harvard and a two-year fellowship in AIDS-Oncology at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He was on the pediatric rheumatology staff at the Massachusetts General Hospital for Children for 20 years before returning to his native Southern California, where he is the president of the Los Angeles Pediatric Society.