 Joining Fred Nijhout’s lab at Duke University he developed a deep interest in Evolutionary developmental biology, receiving his Ph.D in 2002.From 2002 to 2004 he joined the University of Arizona as a postdoctoral fellow in the Postdoctoral Excellence in Research and Teaching (PERT) program.In 2004, he assumed the position of assistant professor at the Department of Biology at Indiana University, where he was promoted to Associate Professor in 2009 and full professor in 2014.