The basic and fundamental question at the heart of Elliot Meyerowitz's research agenda is: How do plants grow and develop? The Meyerowitz Lab focuses much of its research on the shoot apical meristems of flowering plants. This is the part of the plant consisting of a concentration of stem cells, and it is the origin point of the cells that make the plant's leaves, stems, and flowers.

Meyerowitz refers to this area as a nanomachine—a tiny part of the plant responsible for the creation of the entirety of the plant's above-ground portion. In order to understand the domains of gene expression of the meristem, the Meyerowitz Lab has innovated computational models and experiments that measure the chemical and mechanical signal interactions in the meristem. This work has led to profound insights into the plant hormone system, and it has strong ramifications for both the global food supply and climate change due to the controlling role of plant leaves in balancing carbon dioxide and oxygen in the atmosphere.

Meyerowitz’s interest in genetics developed in the lab of Cyrus Levinthal at Columbia University. Through graduate school, Meyerowitz focused on animal genetics and worked with fish. As a graduate student at Yale, Meyerowitz examined the brain-eye development and interactions of Drosophila, the common fruit fly. In the late 1970s, Meyerowitz worked with David Hogness at Stanford on genetic cloning, and he joined Caltech's faculty in 1980. At Caltech, Meyerowitz contributed to Drosophila research that dates back to the founding of the Division of Biology in 1928.

The numerous honours and awards Meyerowitz has received include the Genetics Society of America Medal, Japan's International Prize for Biology, and the Balzan Prize. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, the Académie des Sciences, and the Royal Society. Meyerowitz has been president of the International Society for Plant Molecular Biology, the Genetics Society of America, and the Society for Developmental Biology. From 2000 to 2010, he served as Division Chair of Caltech's Division of Biology and Biological Engineering.