He attended the University of Michigan as an undergraduate and later obtained a Ph.D. in Astrophysics at the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu. He performed his postdoctoral work at the University of California in both Davis and Santa Cruz. His research focuses on the study of supermassive black holes and how they affect the growth and evolution of distant galaxies. Kocevski’s work utilizes multi-wavelength observations ranging from the X-ray to the infrared, with a particular focus on imaging from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. He has served on numerous advisory panels for NASA and has helped shape the direction of Hubble’s science mission.