His research focuses on modeling complex systems in the context of empirical data. He holds a PhD from the University of Maryland School of Public Policy where he explored agent-based modeling as a tool for policy analysis. He has been a research scholar at CISSM, a visiting scholar at the Brookings Institution's Center for Social and Economic Dynamics (CSED) and attended the Santa Fe Institute's Complex Systems Summer School. During the 1990s he was the technical director of the GIS program for Westchester County, New York. His interests include the quantitative study of conflict dynamics, modeling adaptation to a changing climate, understanding the human and economic flows driving changes in the global urban system, and the development of novel urban metrics based on nighttime lights.