He enjoys teaching pure mathematics for its elegance and beauty, and applied mathematics for its power and urgency, and he is most happy when the two come together. He received the university's Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching in 2009. His research interests have morphed over time from acoustics (during his high school days in Lindau, Germany) to spectral sequences (in his graduate work with Richard Koch at the University of Oregon) to problems at the intersection of mathematics with economics and finance. Outside of academia his greatest joy is making music with his family, Heewon, Hannah and Peter.