Prior to this, from 2018 to 2023, he was the Harold Tanner Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and a Professor of Astronomy at Cornell University.

[3] As a graduate student at Harvard, he led one of the two teams that discovered a dusty disk around HR 4796, a young star, with a large inner hole, which was possibly carved out during the planet formation processes.

In September 2008, he and his collaborators reported the first direct image and spectroscopy of a likely extra-solar planet around a normal star.

[6] for two years and an assistant professor at the University of Michigan for two years, before moving to Toronto, where he served as senior advisor on science engagement to the president of the University of Toronto and founded the Science Leadership Program to enhance the communications and leadership skills of academic scientists.

[9] His primary research areas include the formation and early evolution of stars, brown dwarfs and planets.