[8][9] Ghiorso has also served as Associate Editor for the following scientific journals: American Journal of Science (1990–present); American Mineralogist (1990–1993); Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta (1991–1993); and Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology (2015–present), As an undergraduate, Ghiorso wrote an honors thesis on the hot springs in the Devil's Kitchen area of Lassen Volcanic Park.

[12] An early model for fractional crystallization, which explained why certain types of mineral tend to be found together in igneous rocks, was Bowen's reaction series, formulated in 1922.

Ian Carmichael wanted to determine quantitative information such as the temperature and pressure of the magma when crystals were formed as well as dissolved water and oxygen content.

Although attempts to apply rigorous thermodynamics to igneous processes go back to at least 1949, they were hindered by a lack of experimental data.

[16] Using tools such as a drop calorimeter and wet chemistry, Carmichael and colleagues set out to systematically explore thermodynamic properties of magma at high temperatures.

[17] After a decade of publishing thermodynamic data on minerals such as olivine and feldspar, Ghiorso and Sack presented their new model, now called MELTS.

[18] After the publication of MELTS, Ghiorso continued to improve and extend it with the help of colleagues such as Mark Hirschmann, Paul Asimow, Pete Reiners and Victor Kress.

[17] Asimow and co-authors published phMELTS, a model for mid-ocean ridge basalts that incorporated the effect of water content.

[17][20] With Guilherme (Guil) Gualda, he modified MELTS to work better with rhyolite, a silicate-rich series of rocks, and released rhyolite-MELTS.

[17] Ghiorso is the lead investigator on an NSF collaborative research grant to develop ENKI (Enabling Knowledge Integration), a Web-based model-configuration and testing portal for computational thermodynamics and fluid dynamics.

[22] In 1984, while Ghiorso was at the University of Washington, he received a Presidential Young Investigator Award, a research grant for an amount of $245,918, from the National Science Foundation.