Chin has served as principal investigator for many research projects since 1997 that involve global and regional modeling of tropospheric aerosols and chemistry. She and her coworkers have developed the Goddard Chemistry Aerosol Radiation and Transport (GOCART) model, which has been used to simulate tropospheric aerosols and related gas species, CO, and radionuclides for climate, air quality, and global change studies, with a special focus on analysis of satellite and sub-orbital observations.
Chin's research at GSFC includes aerosol-cloud-chemistry-climate interactions, regional and global air quality, transport of aerosols and trace gases, aerosol impacts on global energy balance, and modeling and analysis of data from satellite, ground-based, and airborne observations.