Her research focuses on understanding the drivers and consequences of land use and land cover change, especially urban growth. Her current research efforts include monitoring and forecasting urban growth in Asia and analyzing the effects of policy reforms on urbanization and agricultural land loss in China, Vietnam, and India. She is Co-Chair of the Urbanization and Global Environmental Change (UGEC) Project of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP) and the Remote Sensing Thematic Leader for the World Conservation Union's (IUCN) Commission on Ecosystem Management (CEM). She is a recipient of the NASA New Investigator Program in Earth Science Award and the NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award.