His research interests are focused on hydrology, particularly scientific questions relating to understanding connections within the hydrologic cycle and how they relate to water quantity and quality. He teaches classes on integrated hydrology, fluid mechanics and modeling terrestrial water flow. He leads a research group of one postdoc and ten graduate students in the Integrated Groundwater Modeling Center. Before joining the faculty at Mines, Dr. Maxwell was staff in the Hydrologic Sciences group at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and he holds a Ph.D. degree in Environmental Water Resources from the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at the University of California, Berkeley.