He attended Emanuil Gojdu High School in Oradea, and competed in physics olympiads.
After moving to the United States at the age of 17, he attended Santa Monica High School for 11th and 12th grades.
[1] He continued as a postdoctoral researcher under Hongjie Dai in Stanford's chemistry department.
[15] He has had a successful career at Stanford, where he is the inaugural Pease-Ye Professor, a position named for its endowers, Jun Ye and Caren Wang, and for Pop's relationship with R. Fabian Pease.
He is the leader of the Pop Lab research group, and also holds an appointment in SystemX.