He is the faculty director of the new Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation. He previously co-founded the CITRIS Invention Lab and also co-directs the Berkeley Institute of Design. His research has received numerous Best Paper Awards at top Human-Computer Interaction conferences, a Sloan Fellowship, an Okawa Research Award and an NSF CAREER Award. He received both the Diane S. McEntyre Award and the Jim and Donna Gray Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching. He completed his PhD in Computer Science at Stanford University in 2009, and received degrees in Digital Media Design, Communication, and Computer and Information Science from the University of Pennsylvania in 2002. Before academia, he had a previous career as the owner of an independent record label and as a traveling DJ.