My general research interests include planetary exploration and evolution of planetary surfaces with an emphasis on remote compositional analyses and spectroscopic techniques.
In the 1980's I established the NASA Reflectance Experiment Laboratory (RELAB, that operates from 0.3 to 25 microns) at Brown as a multi-user NASA-supported spectroscopy facility. My planetary science research focus is largely on the character and evolution of the Moon and small bodies of the solar system. I became the Principal Investigator leading NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) experiment launched to the Moon and also worked as Co-Investigator on Dawn, a NASA mission to explore the largest asteroids, Vesta and Ceres.