He was awarded his PhD from the University of Queensland in 2000. His main research interests are in the areas of Optimization, Metaheuristics, Evolutionary Computation and Machine Learning. More specifically, he is interested in the intersections between these areas, including the use of probabilistic models in black-box optimization algorithms (e.g. Estimation of Distribution Algorithms) and using machine learning and data-driven techniques to better understand the nature of optimization problems and algorithms.