Originally trained as a cognitive psychologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He received augmentation to this training with postdoctoral fellowships in computational modeling (Carnegie Mellon), neuroscience (Albert Einstein College of Medicine), and epidemiology/complex systems (Columbia University). Over the past decade, he has become heavily involved in understanding dynamic processes and drivers of risky behavior and decision making, primarily in a public health context, at the scale of the individual and populations. He is now currently expanding these ideas into other contexts and for other applications (e.g., DoD, DoE, DHS). He teaches agent-based modeling approaches for social and political processes.