Landes joined the University of Houston at an assistant professor in 2006, and moved to Rice University in 2009. She was appointed Kenneth S. Pitzer-Schlumberger Chair in 2021. Her early independent work considered super-resolution single molecule spectroscopy for the characterization of biomolecules using FRET with membrane receptors and  diffusion within polymer brushes and porous hydrogel materials. She has pioneered the application of super-resolution microscopy to understand chromatography and has focused on tuning the plasmonic properties of nanomaterials using electrochemistry and stimuli-responsive polymers. She has also shown how silver ions disperse from the tips of gold-silver nanoparticle alloys, which may improve catalytic activity. Her biophysical chemistry work has demonstrated that single-molecule approaches could be used to better understand cancer metastasis.
Landes established the NSF Center for Adapting Flaws into Features (CAFF) in 2021 and serves as its director. The center investigates the defects in silicon-based electronics that hold promise for improving device performance, explore the structural and optoelectronic processes that make these flaws influential, and realize technologies that incorporate and exploit these flaws.
Landes was elected Chair of the Physical Chemistry Division in 2020.
Landes joined the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2023.