Best known for creating and producing the popular CSI: Crime Scene Investigation television franchise, he also contributed as a screenwriter to the 2009 film Terminator Salvation and produced an ABC reality competition program called Whodunnit?
He attended three colleges: Arizona State University, the University of La Verne (California), and the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. He ultimately graduated from UNLV.
He wrote and produced a web series called Cybergeddon.
Though born in Illinois, he grew up primarily in Las Vegas, Nevada, as the son of a casino worker mother and hotel employee father. Before separating, he and his wife Jennifer became parents to three sons.
He and Hollywood actor Gary Sinise, fellow natives of Blue Island, Illinois, were born in the same hospital, thirteen years apart. Sinise later starred in the New York edition of CSI.