His research interests are in the areas of knowledge modeling, water and energy sustainability, engineering learning modules for freshmen, and international collaboration. He leads a major curriculum reform project, funded under the department-level reform program of the NSF, at Virginia Tech. A spiral curriculum approach is adopted to reformulate engineering curriculum in bioprocess engineering in this project. He co-authored an award winning paper with his PhD student (Jennifer Mullin) at the 2007 annual conference of ASEE. He received the College of Engineering Faculty Fellow award in 2008. His PhD co-advisee (Ricky Castles) won the third prize in a poster competition under the "Personalized Learning System" category at a Grand Challenges conference organized by the National Academy of Engineering at Duke University during March 02-03, 2009.