He earned a Ph.D. in political science from Indiana University and an M.S. in Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences from Northwestern University. His current research focuses on the development and application of models to look at the dynamics of politics. His event count time series models and Bayesian time series models are for forecasting intra-state and inter-state political conflict and political economy topics. He regularly teaches courses and presents workshops on advanced regression, time series, and Bayesian techniques. He is an associate editor at Political Analysis.