He obtained his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Northwestern University in 2008. He completed a NSF/Chateaubriand postdoctoral fellowship at Ecole Superieure de Physique et Chimie Industrielles de la Ville de Paris. His research interests include polymer glasses, nanoconfined polymer dynamics, polymer thin film and nanoparticle formation, MAPLE and responsive polymers. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the Quadrant Award, ACS New Investigator Grant, 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Grant, NSF CAREER Award, AFOSR YIP, Presidential Early Career Award for Scientist and Engineers, Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship and Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award. Most recently he was named to The Root 100 list of most influential African American in 2014.