Prior to joining UM, he was a faculty at Michigan State University for six years. Prior to that, he was a Senior Engineer at the California Institute of Technology, Jet Propulsion Laboratory for 7 years. He earned his Ph. D. (2001) in Materials Science and Engineering from UCLA. As a materials scientist and engineer with an interest in synthesis, processing, and functionalization of ceramics and hydrogels, his research is highly interdisciplinary and guided by the fields of energy storage/conversion and biomedicine.