He received his bachelors in chemistry from Bowdoin College in 2007 and his PhD in chemistry from Caltech with Dennis Dougherty in 2013. His doctoral work used unnatural amino acid mutagenesis and other chemical biology approaches to dissect interactions between drugs and their protein targets. He next made a significant change in research focus to study chemical ecology and natural products chemistry during a postdoctoral fellowship with Jon Clardy at Harvard Medical School from 2014 to 2017. In his postdoctoral work, he researched the structures and biosynthesis of antibiotics produced by symbiotic bacteria associated with fungus-growing ants. His lab uses defensive symbioses as a platform for antibiotic discovery and for an evolutionary perspective on natural product biosynthesis.