He earned his PhD from MIT in 2008 for work in robot mapping. He has worked on autonomous vehicles for over a decade, including work on the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge, vehicles for Ford and Toyota Research Institute, and now May Mobility. His academic research includes work on perception, planning, and mapping. He was awarded a DARPA Young Faculty Award, named one of Popular Science's "Brilliant 10", and was winner of the 2010 MAGIC robotics competition. He is perhaps best known for his work on AprilTags, SLAM using MaxMixtures and SGD, and Multi-Policy Decision Making.