He obtained his PhD from Stanford University in 2005, and has also held positions at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and the Australian National University in Canberra. His research interests include decentralized control, sparse estimation, and various aspects of optimization, and his awards include the 2005 IEEE CDC Best Student-Paper Award, the 2008 IFAC World Congress Young Author Prize, the 2007 IEEE George S. Axelby Outstanding Paper Award, and the 2011 SIAM Control and Systems Theory Prize.