[2] His thesis, titled A search for the large angular scale polarization of the cosmic microwave background and supervised by Peter Timbie, was accepted in 2000.

[11] Keating received an Excellence in Stewardship Award in 2018/19, and is an honorary member of the National Society of Black Physicists.

[14] Keating researches cosmology, focusing on the study of the cosmic microwave background and its relationship to the origin and evolution of the universe.

[15] He conceived the BICEP (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) instrument, which observed from the South Pole.

Each episode is a long-form conversation with nobel laureates, scientists, writers and other notable individuals such as Stephen C. Meyer (an advocate of intelligent design[26][27]), Noam Chomsky, Eric Weinstein, Jill Tarter, Sara Seager, and nobel prize winners interviewed for his books,[13] lasting around an hour.

[30] He has also recorded videos for conservative website PragerU,[31] and has talked about popular science connected with The Witcher television series.

[35] The Nobel Prize was a motivating factor in Keating's career due to his academic rivalry with his father.

[36] Keating published his first book Losing the Nobel Prize: A Story of Cosmology, Ambition, and the Perils of Science’s Highest Honor on April 24, 2018.

[37][16] The book describes the BICEP and BICEP2 experiments, which were located at the South Pole and were devised to detect and map the polarization of the cosmic microwave background radiation leftover from the Big Bang.

[42] It features interviews with Nobel Prize winners Adam Riess, Rainer Weiss, Sheldon Glashow, Carl Wieman, Roger Penrose, Duncan Haldane, Frank Wilczek, John C. Mather and Barry Barish.

[44] As a youth, Keating was a member of the Catholic Church, although he has reported that his mother and stepfather were non-observant Jews.

[1] He was a trustee of Math for America, San Diego in 2006–2014, Angel Flight West in 2010–2015, and the National Museum of Mathematics in 2014–2017.