Dr. Ebel is a geologist specializing in meteorites: pieces of planets, and "left-overs" from the formation of the solar system.  The distant, resource-rich asteroid belt is his field area. He develops thermodynamic models describing the equilibrium distribution of elements between fully speciated gas, liquid, and solid mineral phases at high temperatures. His models describe the outcomes of condensation, evaporation, and crystallization processes affecting the solids and liquid droplets that combined in the oldest meteorites. Dr. Ebel is a leader in using x-ray CAT-scan imaging to obtain 3-dimensional information about meteorites, lunar materials, and samples returned by NASA missions.