In this capacity he designs, develops, and carries out atmospheric research projects that feature lidar systems, analyzes remote sensing data, and advances understanding of mesoscale wind systems and atmospheric boundary layer processes, emphasizing insight gained from new lidar-based observational technologies. He has served as a principal investigator on successful lidar campaigns involving atmospheric boundary-layer properties (including the stable boundary layer [SBL] and its relationship to low-level jet [LLJ] properties), air pollution and air quality studies, and mountain and other complex-terrain flows. During the past decade, the Doppler-lidar studies have become increasingly focused on wind energy applications, as it became apparent that SBL, LLJ, and complex-terrain studies had direct applicability to wind-energy problems. Dr. Banta served as the CSL P.I. for the laboratory-wide collaboration with the Department of Energy and other participants, called the Second Wind Forecast Improvement Project (WFIP-2), a measurement and modeling campaign that includes an 18-month field phase. During this phase CSD deployed two remotely operated Doppler lidars to the Columbia River Basin of Oregon-Washington, which was a first for a project of this duration. An important product of the resulting dataset has been a demonstration of the use of Doppler lidar for numerical weather prediction model verification and improvement.