Matthew began research with IDeA Labs in November 2004. He initiated a research project with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation involving the modeling and control of Piute Dam in the Sevier River Basin of Utah. Matthew used this research to complete his honors thesis requirement and qualify for honors graduation. Matthew was also involved with the IDeA Labs demand forecasting group, as well as researching methods to forecast demand for the BYU Bookstore. His interests are system identification, feedback control, dynamic systems, demand forecasting, and game theory.

Matthew was a recipient of the prestigious Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship for 2005. He was also the recipient of two BYU Office of Research and Creative Activities grants for research and development of an appropriate software framework for web-based hydrological data display (2004) and the system identification process for Piute Dam/Sevier River (2005). Matthew also received other scholarships, including the Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Scholarship, the National Instruments Scholarship, and many full/half-tuition BYU scholarships. Matthew graduated from BYU in April 2006 with a B.S. in Computer Science. Following graduation, Matthew went on to pursue his PhD at Cornell University studying Operations Research.