You can buy a standard or minature mouse and plug it into your laptop. It'll make your life a whole lot easier. I assume, of course, that you have a free USB port. If not, you may have a problem. (Even a bluetooth mouse would work, but you would probably still need to plug the bluetooth dongle into a USB port, so...)
(There is a key to enter the research screen but I didn't notice any obvious keys to rotate it, select anything, or change the selection; of course I didn't hit every key on the keyboard, just the arrow keys and numpad keys - you probably don't have numpad keys anyways, but they didn't do anything in numpad mode.)
Also, yes, Anvilfolk. Instead of spending time building buildings on every planet you build whatever satellites (say, for defense) you may want, and spend your time on ship designing and selecting what to research, issuing ship orders, and combat. Ship construction is very quick as well, in your home planet and others which are similar in size and minerals once they're fully terraformed and industrialized (most colonies won't be as capable, and you have to defend them well).
The random events and encounters also make it far more interesting than most other games. Some of the most important or useful technologies are derived from some obscure locations in the tech tree that you would never think to research if you're only researching things that seem useful, though.