Since he came to ODU, he has secured research grants from the funding agencies such as the NSF, Petroleum Research Fund, USDA, and Jeffress Foundation. He has published more than 160 peer-reviewed journal papers and 9 book chapters, and his papers have been cited more than 10000 times with an H index of 58. He was awarded Distinguished Research Award by College of Sciences, Old Dominion University. In addition, Dr. Mao has been invited to give talks at many institutes and conferences. He was an associate editor of Journal of Geophysical Research, Biogeosciences and currently serves as an academic editor of Plos One. He is among the top 2% of most-cited researchers in the world.