He received a B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University in 1993 and 1995, and a Ph.D. from the Stanford University Dept. of Computer Science Robotics Laboratory in 1999. He was a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Tokyo, Dept. of Mechano-Informatics Robotics Laboratory from 1999 to 2001. He joined the faculty at CMU in 2002. His research interests include robotics, motion planning, computational geometry, and computer graphics and animation. He received the Okawa Foundation Award for Young Researchers in 2007.