His current research is focused in 3 areas: 1) experimentally characterizing responses of cellular signaling pathways regulating protein synthesis to individual amino acids, hormonal signals, and cellular energy supply and building a model of that system with the goal of refining amino acid requirements for lactating cattle; 2) improving models of nitrogen recycling to the digestive tract with the goal of better defining ruminally degradable protein requirements; and 3) improving our understanding of the regulation of volatile fatty acid production in the rumen with the goal of improving prediction accuracy within our current rumen models and better understanding the relationship between ruminal function and methane production. The long-term objective of the work is to improve animal efficiency and reduce the impact of food animal production on the environment.