He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Ecology & Evolution at the University of Chicago. The goal of his research is to develop genomic knowledge and tools that accelerate the genetic improvement of climate-resilient crops. His group's research is focused on the genomics of climate adaptation in sorghum. Ongoing projects include improving chilling tolerance of grain sorghum for the Great Plains, building genome-phenome maps of ecophysiological traits for energy sorghum, and developing genomics-enabled breeding pipelines to improve drought adaptation of dual-purpose sorghums in West Africa and Haiti.