Celeste's research aims to understand Earth’s surface environments, both in the past and present. She integrates physical sedimentology with geochemistry, biogeochemistry, and stratigraphy to study global geological processes, their products, and their links with global climate patterns. In particular, her research utilizes a combination of field-based mapping and laboratory-based chemical analysis to examine the physical processes that control depositional trends in outcrop, and how carbon sequestration in sediments has occurred and evolved throughout geologic time.