He earned a B.S. degree from La Sierra University in Biology in 1994 and a Ph.D. degree in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Research Center in 2001. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center from 2001-2004 and a Research Fellow at the National Human Genome Research Institute, NIH, from 2004-2007.