He is currently a professor in the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology at The Australian National University. He obtained his PhD in 2002 from the University of California at San Diego with Joanne Chory studying Natural Variation in Arabidopsis light response. His postdoctoral research with Prof Joseph Ecker at the Salk Institute revealed genomic diversity among Arabidopsis thaliana accessions.

In 2004 he was assistant and then associate professor in the Dept of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago. The research focused on genome-wide association studies and genotyping by sequencing in emerging model organisms. In 2012, he moved to ANU where he is currently a professor working to identify the genetic basis of local adaptation to variable and changing climates using phenomic and landscape genomic approaches in plant model organisms and foundation species.