Her areas of special expertise are in environmental stress physiology, plant production in controlled environment, and photoautotrohic micropropagation. Her current research areas include identifying drought and salt tolerant low water use plant materials for urban landscape, quantifying growth and physiological responses of crops to drought and salt stresses, and determining the minimum water requirement for urban landscape plants (trees, shrubs, and ground covers) for maintaining a healthy landscape while conserving water. In addition, she is evaluating the salt and drought tolerance of a range of bioenergy crops for semi-arid regions. She received a Ph.D. in Horticulture from Chiba University, Japan.