His interests in psychiatric genetics began while he was completing his PhD in statistics from the University of Pittsburgh. Upon graduating, he pursued these interests by working in psychiatric genetics research at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center for several years, where he worked with on a variety of phenotypes, including schizophrenia, eating disorders, and Alzheimer’s disease. Subsequently, he obtained a research position at GlaxoSmithKline working mainly in pharmacogenetics. However, he ultimately decided he wanted to return to academia and obtained his current position at the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics.