Major research topics of the EEEB program are aquatic ecology, with an emphasis on benthic processes, wetland ecosystem ecology, evolutionary ecology and mechanisms of speciation, terrestrial population ecology, and microbial ecology and applied microbiology. A particular strength of the EEEB program is in environmental restoration and exotic species. Also, a number of faculty study the ecology of insects.
Experiments range in scale from laboratory microcosms to whole ecosystem manipulation.
All of the research of the EEEB faculty incorporates both applied and basic aspects. Excellent laboratory facilities exist on campus and at the University of Notre Dame Environmental Research Center in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The Center for Environmental Science and Technology has a large variety of instrumentation that is available at no cost to university personnel. The EEEB faculty are mostly housed in the new Jerry Hank Family Center for Environmental Studies, which was dedicated in September 1998. EEEB faculty and graduate students publish regularly in the best journals in their fields.