He received his Ph.D. in 1986 at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and has been at Duke University since 1994. He directs the Landscape Ecology Laboratory and teaches classes in landscape ecology, spatial analysis, and multivariate analysis. His expertise is in landscape ecology, conservation biology, forest community ecology, spatial analysis, multivariate analysis, and simulation modeling. He is developing new analytic approaches to applications of immediate practical concern, such as conservation planning.