He received his Ph.D. in chemistry from Harvard University in 1995 and was a Fulbright and Chateaubriand Scholar at the Université Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg, France before starting his independent position at Purdue in 1997. He is an active member of the Purdue Cancer Center, the Birck Nanotechnology Center, the Bindley Biosciences Center, and the Oncological Sciences Center in the Discovery Park hub at Purdue University, and was recently appointed by the College of Science as a University Faculty Scholar.