Tom received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in Organic Chemistry and then did postdoctoral fellowship at the California Institute of Technology. He then joined The Upjohn Company (14.5 years) where he worked on Male Contraception, Antiprogestational agents and Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia. He took a year sabbatical at Rockefeller University (laboratory of Prof. Tom Kaiser).

On return to Upjohn, he joined the Biopolymer Chemistry Department in the Biotechnology Division where he began to study peptides with a variety of activities including integrins, cytokines such as IL1b, Amylin A4 peptide and a variety of others. He joined Immunetech/Tanabe Research Laboratories in 1988 as Director of Chemical Sciences where the work focused on integrins, and other targets for immuno-inflammatory diseases. In 1997 Tom joined Coulter/Corixa Pharmaceuticals as Senior Director of Medicinal Chemistry and studied peptide/protein-anticancer agent conjugates as an approach to targeted and enzyme activated anticancer prodrugs. He continued in the prodrug area of research at NewBiotics as Vice President of Drug Discovery (January 2001) where the work focused on overcoming resistance in cancer and infectious diseases with prodrug therapeutics that are activated by resistance causing enzymes disease related unique or over-expressed enzymes. Then in March 2002 he joined AlleCure Corp. which merged in January 2003 with two other companies to form MannKind Corp. which is focused on allergy, asthma, autoimmune diseases, cancer vaccines and inhaled therapeutics such as insulin.

Tom's has over 55 publications, more than 15 patents/applications, he is former editorial board member, Arch. Andrology, J. Andrology; currently ad-hoc reviewer for a number of journals, ad-hoc grant reviewer NIEHS, NIH, MRC; former Treasurer, Amer. Soc. Andrology; He is active on a number of organizations including the Amer. Chemical Soc., the Amer. Peptide Soc. (Council member) and the Southern California Biomedical Council.