Grossman has performed research across fields ranging from plant biology, microbiology, marine biology, ecology, genomics, engineering and photosynthesis and initiated large scale algal genomics by leading the Chlamydomonas genome project and serving on the steering committee of the Porphyra umbilicalis genome project.
In 2002 he received the Darbaker Prize (Botanical Society of America) for work on microalgae and in 2009 received the Gilbert Morgan Smith Medal (National Academy of Sciences) for the quality of his publications on marine and freshwater algae. In 2017, he was Chair of the Gordon Research Conference on Photosynthesis and gave the Arnon endowed lecture on photosynthesis in Berkeley in March of 2017. He has given numerous plenary lectures and received a number of fellowships throughout his career, including the Visiting Scientist Fellowship - Department of Life and Environmental Sciences (DiSVA), Università Politecnica delle Marche (UNIVPM) (Italy, 2014), the Lady Davis Fellowship (Israel, 2011) and most recently the Chaire Edmond de Rothschild (to work IBPC in Paris in 2017-2018).
He has been Co-Editor in Chief of Journal of Phycology since 2013 and has served on the editorial boards of many well-respected biological journalism including the Annual Review of Genetics, Plant Physiology, Eukaryotic Cell, Journal of Biological Chemistry, Molecular Plant, and Current Genetics. He has also served on scientific advisory boards for both nonprofit and for profit research institutions and companies including Boyce Thompson Institute, Phoenix Bioinformatics, Exelixis, Martek Biosciences, Solazyme/TerraVia, GEM, Checkerspot and Phycoil.