He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley (Environmental Science, Policy, and Management) and his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Stanford University (Earth Systems). His research focuses on understanding and predicting species diversity and distributions in human-altered landscapes, as well as applying this knowledge to inform conservation in fragmented habitats. His specific interests include spatial macroecology, the species-area relationship, community turnover in space and time, extinction prediction, acoustic recording technology, bird call classification, ecological software development, reproducible research, and sustainability accounting.