After graduating with a Ph.D. in Computer Science (1989) from the University of Essex, he lectured for 9 years in the Basser Department of Computer Science at the University of Sydney. He then spent three years working in the Intelligent Systems Research Group at British Telecom Laboratories in the U.K., followed by a year as Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Information Systems at the University of Melbourne. His work at British Telecom was recognized in a team award of the British Computer Society Medal for Innovation in Information Technology.

His research interests centre on the application of logic in Artificial Intelligence to formalize problems in knowledge representation, natural language processing and agent-based computing. He is currently Programme Manager for the Natural Adaptive User Interfaces/Smart Personal Assistants Programme of the Smart Internet Technology CRC, where he leads a project on developing dialogue and teamwork models for application in personal assistants.