His father, James (Jim), was a draftsman and later a manager at the General Electric Company.

His mother, Helen, was a nurse and later a high school English teacher.

[1] His undergraduate and graduate advisors were C. Peter Lillya and George M. Whitesides.

Since 2006 he has been a guest professor at Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry and has taught there each semester since 2005.

His most cited paper, written jointly with Didem Öner, is "Ultrahydrophobic Surfaces.