His doctoral thesis was supervised by Charles Townes[2][3][10] and involves the use of nonlinear optical techniques in infrared detection for astronomy.

Shortly after the development of great interest in this field in 2000, he realized that it is possible to produce slow and fast-light effects in room-temperature solids.

In particular, with his students he pioneered the use of coherent population oscillations as a mechanism for producing slow and fast light in room temperature solids.

[22][23] This latter work has led the community to realize that classical correlations can at times be used to mimic effects that appear to be of a quantum origin, but using much simpler laboratory implementations.

Boyd has performed fundamental studies of the nature of local field effects in optical materials including dense atomic vapors.

[28] Similar types of enhancement can occur for fiber and nanofabricated ring-resonator systems,[29] with important applications in photonic switching[30] and sensing of biological pathogens.

Moreover, in the 1980s he performed laboratory and theoretical studies of the role of Rabi oscillations in determining the nature of four-wave mixing processing in strongly driven atomic vapors.

[34] Boyd's work has been widely published in books and peer-reviewed scientific journals, including Science,[12][13][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45] Nature,[46][47] and Physical Review Letters.