The members of the group represent a diversity of disciplines and research interests, including tectonics and structural geology, sedimentary geology, geochronology, and paleomagnetism. The unifying goal of the group's work is to learn more about the processes and consequences of major movements of the earth's crust. The unusually diverse and complex tectonic activity of Alaska and the surrounding region are recorded in its rocks, providing insights into not only the history of the region but also tectonic processes in general.

Seismic reflection and refraction data and gravity and magnetic field data help in determining subsurface crustal structure, and paleomagnetic data help in reconstructing past movements of crustal fragments. Reconstruction of the deposition of ancient carbonate and terrigenous clastic rocks provides important insights into the climate, physiography, and depositional processes at various times in geological history, and these in turn are a reflection of the tectonic setting at the time. Unravelling the style and sequence of deformational events yields clues as to the processes that are active during and after plate interactions. Geochronology provides an essential means to date geologic events, thus calibrating the geological history reconstructed using other methods.

The group has worked mainly in northern Alaska, but is involved in other parts of the northern Pacific margin and circum-Arctic region, including the Russian far east. A major focus in the recent past was multi-disciplinary study of the geology of the northeastern Brooks Range in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR),sponsored by the petroleum industry and the U.S. Department of Energy. Several faculty members have also participated with the northern part of the U.S. Geological Survey's Trans-Alaska Crustal Transect (TACT) project. Structural, paleomagnetic, geochronologic, and seismological studies in the Russian Far East are in progress in cooperation with Russian researchers. Numerous other projects have been conducted in cooperation with the Seismology and Volcanology groups of the Geophysical Institute, the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys, and other university and government researchers.