His areas of expertise include geometric representation theory, diagrammatic algebra and low-dimensional topology. He received his BA in 2002 from Simon's Rock College after attending Budapest Semesters in Mathematics and an REU at LSU in 2001. He received his Ph.D. in 2007 and went on postdoctoral positions at the Institute for Advanced Study and MIT as well as tenure track positions at the University of Oregon and Northeastern University before coming to Virginia in 2013. He's been the recipient of an NSF CAREER award and an Alfred P. Sloan fellowship, as well as spending Spring 2014 as a Junior Chair at the Université Denis Diderot (Paris 7).