He previously completed PhD in Informatics from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (May 2015). His research is focused on pursuing and developing data-driven bioinformatics approaches to study the deep evolutionary relationships between viral lineages and cellular organisms. More recently, he has also become interested in taxonomic profiling of the human microbiota associated with various social, metabolic, and physiological states and generating an in-depth understanding of the horizontal genetic transfer (HGT) occurring between prokaryotes and eukaryotes. His research regularly involves undergraduate students, is highly collaborative in nature (with teams in Korea, France, and USA), and has been frequently covered by popular science media (e.g. Scientific American, Discover News, Cosmos, Science et Vie).