Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2019-2020

Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Atmospheric Science

Research Summary: My research aims to understand what chemical compounds are in wildfire smoke, how they change as the smoke travels downwind, and what effects these chemicals have on humans and ecosystems when wildfire smoke impacts them. Specifically, I study ammonia and other reactive nitrogen compounds which play an important role in creating more particles and in creating ozone, which are both harmful to humans.  To do this I was part of a recent field project that put lab equipment on a plane and used this flying laboratory to sample smoke all across the western US.