In 2014, he joined Stanford University as a Senior Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and as a professor in the School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences.

His early research focused on an esoteric group of minerals, metamictization Nb-Ta-Ti oxides that are unusual because they have become amorphous due to radiation damage caused by the presence of radioactive elements.

Over the past forty years, the early study of these unusual minerals has blossomed into a broadly based research program on radiation effects in complex ceramic materials.

He is the author or co-author of over 750 research publications and the editor or co-editor of 18 monographs, proceedings volumes or special issues of journals.

In 2014, he was appointed as one of the Founding Executive Editors of Geochemical Perspective Letters and to the Editorial Advisory Board for Applied Physics Reviews.

He has been a member of program committees for the symposium on the Scientific Basis for Nuclear Waste Management held in ten different countries over the past 40 years.