His research is focused on how plants transport and use water, which is one of the most important factors in determining the survival or extinction of plant species in different environments. Associate Professor Brodribb was awarded a Putnam Fellowship in 2007 from the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University, the Grady L. Webster Structural Botany Prize in 2009 from the American Journal of Botany, and the W.S. Cooper Award from the Ecological Society of America in 2012 and a Thomson Reuters Citation and Innovation Award in 2015.