After graduating from the University of British Columbia and doing a 9 month postdoc at the University of Rhode Island, he was hired at Brookhaven National Laboratory as staff scientist in the newly formed Oceanographic and Atmospheric Sciences Division. He worked there for 23 years and developed the field of environmental biophysics. In 1998, he moved his research group to Rutgers University. In 2007, he was elected to the National Academy of Science for his research on the global carbon cycle.