He was recruited to UT Southwestern under the Endowed Scholars Program and is named the Nancy Cain and Jeffrey A. Marcus Scholar in Medical Research, in Honor of Dr. Bill S. Vowell. John trained as a postdoctoral fellow with Charlie Rice at Rockefeller University and received his Ph.D. in the laboratory of Erik Falck-Pedersen at Weill Cornell Medical School in New York City. His primary research interests are innate immune responses to viral infection and virus-host interactions. In addition to the New Innovator Award, John is also the 2015 Rita Allen Foundation Milton E. Cassel Scholar.