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Expert spent his graduate school career studying a variety of coffee science areas. His work focused on coffee horticulture, production, biochemistry, ecology, physiology, and sensory science. He also explored processing and roasting of coffee. Much of his work related directly to farmers and practices that would benefit them. He is involved in several research projects that aim to objectively determine the origin of a coffee based on chemical markers. He continues to pursue research opportunites both through public funding and the private sector.

Expert is a skilled cupper and he follows the coffee industry closely, particularly the specialty coffee industry. He is active in several trade associations, including the Specialty Coffee Association and the Hawaii Coffee Association.

Expert's expertise has led him to work with coffee producers and governments around the world. His work with producers involves improving the yields, sustainability, and quality of their coffee along the entire production chain, including growing, processing, roasting, and brewing.

His expertise includes strong communication skills. He has authored many articles about coffee that have appeared in scientific journals, trade journals, newspapers, newsletters, and websites. He authored 3 books which comprehensively discuss coffee from seed to cup. He is also a skilled speaker. He regularly leads seminars, workshops, and tasting events to educate farmers, roasters, and consumers about all areas of coffee. The educational lectures have included teaching in university classrooms.

Expert is an expert on the Hawaii coffee industry. Having lived and worked in Hawaii for over two decades in the Hawaii coffee industry, he understands every aspect of it. His aforementioned book uses Hawaii as the case study to teach about coffee.

With Masters and PhD degrees in tropical horticulture, Expert has expertise in the growth and production of tropical crops. The depth of his horticulture expertise relates to coffee horticulture.

Expert has experience in every area of coffee production, including planting, nutrition, pruning, harvesting (both mechanically and manually). His expertise includes shade coffee culture and its ecological, environmental, social, and economic implications.

Expert has been extensively involved in agricultural research involving coffee. Primarily, his work as occurred on research stations and farms in Hawaii. However, he helped design an on-farm project in Zambia and explored control measures for the coffee berry borer.

His research has focused on shade culture of coffee. Subsets of that research included soil nutrition, leaf nutrition, photosynthesis, yield, and quality.

Expert is comfortable using an array of statistical program packages and can work with both univariate and multivariate analyses.

Expert's research has included the biochemical exploration of green and brewed coffee. He has worked extensively on correlating coffee cup quality to biochemical markers. He is very experienced in the determination of geographical origin using biochemical markers. He also has experience with caffeine chemistry. The instrumentation he is most familiar with are HPLC, SPME-GC, and NIRS.

A continuing area of Expert's research and work is coffee sensory science. He has trained and used taste panels to explore coffee cup quality issues as they relate to agronomic practices. He is currently fine-tuning a competition scoring system that differs extensively from the common 100-point system.

He is a skilled cupper and he works to bring more rigor to the coffee industry's current sensory practices.

Expert makes regular visits to coffee farms in Hawaii to advise on production issues. He also advises clients on the quality of their products. Expert sources Hawaii-grown coffee for cafes and roasters around the world. Expert gives coffee quality workshops for farmers and consumers at events like the Kona Coffee Cultural Festival, the Kau Coffee Festival, and the Taste of Waialua. Expert has worked with the Specialty Coffee Association of America to do research on coffee brewing. Expert has traveled to numerous coffee producing countries to work with farmers and cooperatives as well as hosted visiting professionals. His role has included farm tours, offering seminars, training extension officers, and discussing quality.