He earned his PhD from the University of Tennessee, USA in 2005 for his work on the molecular pathogenesis and genomics of Streptococcus pyogenes. Since then, he performed research in several international institutions, including the University of Chicago, San Diego State University, and University of California-San Diego, and the Argonne National Laboratory with specialization in microbial genomics, bioinformatics, and genome annotation using the subsystems technology. His main research interests are bacterial pathogenesis, molecular epidemiology and systems biology of microbial pathogens, microbial and bacteriophage genomics/metagenomics, and pharmacomicrobiomics (drug-microbiome interactions).