Professor Ford's expertise is in transparent fiber optic and free-space optical communication networks, dynamic planar and volume holography, physical and geometrical optics, and opto-electronic device packaging. He has been an innovator in the application of micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) to the optical telecommunications infrastructure. For six years at Bell Labs, Ford developed parallel communications systems based on arrays of high speed opto-electronic VLSI and micromechanical devices. He led a team that demonstrated the first MEMS-based components for wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) telecommunications, including a fast variable attenuator, a dynamic spectral equalizer that corrects power variances across the individual wavelengths of a WDM transmission, and a low-loss wavelength add/drop switch. These type of components have become part of the fiber-optic "plumbing" that compose the international communications network.

In his Photonics Systems Integration Lab (PSI-Lab) at UCSD, Ford's research group is working on using both fiber-optic and free-space optical technologies to solve problems in data access, mobile computing, sensors and communication networks. Recent work has emphasized micro-imagers (the 'origami' telephoto lens) and compact intensity concentrators for solar energy. 

Joseph E. Ford joined the UCSD faculty in 2002, after a two-year stint as Chief Scientist at Optical Micro-Machines. From 1994 to 2000, Ford was a principal investigator in the Advanced Photonics Research Department of AT&T (and later Lucent) Bell Laboratories. In 1992, he earned his Ph.D. in electrical engineering and applied physics from UCSD, where he remained as a postdoctoral researcher until mid-1993, when he joined 3D optical data storage startup Call/Recall. 

Prof. Ford was the General Co-Chair of the first IEEE/OSA Conference on Optical MEMS in 2001, and the OSA/IEEE Optical Fiber Communications Conference in 2006. Ford has co-authored over 150 conference presentations, book chapters, and journal papers, and also holds 45 U.S. patents.