He received his B.S. in Physics from Colorado State University and his Ph.D in MSE from MIT. In between he spent 3 years as a thin film engineer at the IBM Watson Research Center. He joined Sandia National Labs in 1992, and then switched to academia in 2006 upon moving to Charlottesville. His research emphasizes self-assembly at the nanoscale in both thin films and bulk thermo-mechanically processed materials for nanoelectronics, thermoelectrics and magnetism.