He received his Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Pathology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, in 2007 and his B.S. in Biochemistry from North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, in 2002. He received postdoctoral training at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, TN and is board certified in Clinical Molecular Genetics by the American Board of Medical Genetics (ABMG). In 2008, he received the Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP) Young Investigator Award for research he conducted on somatic gene mutations observed in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients and their relationship to overall patient survival.