Preston obtained his BS in psychology with a minor in cognitive science from Manhattan College in 2021. He is a second-year doctoral student in the educational psychology and quantitative methods program where he works under the tutelage of his advisor, Dr. Sunha Kim. 

Preston serves as the quantitative lab assistant for the Graduate School of Education's Quantitative and Qualitative Data Analysis Lab.

Broadly speaking, Preston is interested in how socioeconomic status and social class are conceptualized and measured, in both national and international contexts, and how these factors shape educational outcomes and social stratification. He is also interested in multi-group measurement invariance, cross-cultural construct validity, and psychometrics more generally.

In his work, Preston employs statistical methodologies such as structural equation modeling (SEM), multilevel models, multiple membership models and Rasch models.