He earned his PhD and MPhil in biological anthropology at Yale University, and an MsPH in Tropical Medicine and Biostatistics at Tulane School of Public Health. His primary research interests are in infectious disease ecology and biological adaptations to infectious diseases. He has studied the physiology and ecology of malaria infections in Honduran men, HIV infection in men, upper respiratory tract infections in college students, and gastrointestinal infections in wild chimpanzees of Uganda and orangutans of Borneo. His teaching interests include global health, human variation and evolution, evolutionary medicine and behavioral endocrinology. Before coming to IU, he was an assistant professor of anthropology at University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.