His research program seeks to understand how genomes encode spatial information in developing embryos. He completed his undergraduate studies in Genetics at the University of Alberta. His doctoral work with Randall Moon at the University of Washington focused on non-canonical Wnt/PCP signaling in Xenopus and zebrafish. He switched to working on the simple invertebrate chordate Ciona as a postdoc with William Smith at UCSB because of its remarkably small and simple but stereotypically chordate embryo. His lab is working to understand the relationship between cell shape and spindle positioning in asymmetric cell division, and also to develop a systems-level understanding of notochord morphogenesis. His work is funded by both the NSF and the NIH.