His major research interests are hydrometeorology, ecohydrology, land surface modeling, distributed hydrological modeling, global and regional climate modeling, and application of remote sensing to modeling. He earned the CCSM (Community Climate System Model) distinguished achievement award by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in 2008 for his work on developing a novel surface water and groundwater model for use in CCSM and "Xuedu Fengzheng" best dissertation award by CAS in 1996.