His main research interests are in computational biology and bioinformatics. He did his undergraduate study at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, where he received a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering and a second bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Technology in 1994. After receiving a Master's degree from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he worked in the IT industry for five years. Then he returned to school and received a PhD in Computer Science at University of California, Davis in 2007. From 2007 to 2013, he was an assistant professor at Computer Science and Engineering Department, University of Connecticut. He received NSF CAREER award in 2010.