He develops and applies Earth system models (ESMs) to investigate the global carbon cycle and feedbacks between biogeochemical cycles and the climate system. Through a US Department of Energy (DOE)-supported model-data integration project, Forrest leads community model benchmarking activities and the development of the International Land Model Benchmarking (ILAMB) and International Ocean Model Benchmarking (IOMB) packages. He is particularly interested in applying machine learning methods to explore the interactions of terrestrial and marine ecosystems with hydrology and climate. Through a DOE-supported data management project, Forrest leads development and deployment of a next generation Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) distributed data infrastructure in the US. In addition, Forrest applies data mining methods using high performance computing to problems in landscape ecology, ecosystem modeling, remote sensing, and large-scale climate data analytics. Forrest is also a Joint Faculty Member in the University of Tennessee’s Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering in nearby Knoxville, Tennessee, a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).