Dr. McDowell's research focuses on nonlinear constitutive models for engineering materials, including cellular metallic materials, nonlinear and time dependent fracture mechanics, finite strain inelasticity and defect field mechanics, distributed damage evolution, constitutive relations and microstructure-sensitive computational approaches to deformation and damage of heterogeneous alloys, combined computational and experimental strategies for modeling high cycle fatigue in advanced engineering alloys, atomistic simulations of dislocation nucleation and mediation at grain boundaries, multiscale computational mechanics of materials ranging from atomistics to continuum, and systems-based computational materials design.