Several current and former AirUCI researchers are among the authors and contributors to a book entitled Multiphase Environmental Chemistry in the Atmosphere, published in 2018 by the American Chemical Society as part of their ACS Symposium Series 1299. The three editors are Dr. Sherri Hunt of the U.S. EPA (former AirUCI grad student and researcher), Dr. Alex Laskin of Purdue University (longtime AirUCI collaborator), and Dr. Sergey Nizkorodov (AirUCI co-Director). This book is based on a selection of presentations that were given at the 2017 ACS fall meeting.
The purpose of this book series is to publish timely, comprehensive texts developed from ACS-sponsored symposia. Our three editors make the case that creatively combining traditionally distinct fields of science in order to understand the complex atmospheric reactions and processes is the way forward in advancing research that will shed light on issues of air pollution and climate change.
The author index lists about 20 current and former members of our AirUCI team. Several others are current and former AirUCI collaborators. The editors conspicuously credit Barbara Finlayson-Pitts for her breadth of knowledge and appreciation of the power of interdisciplinary research.
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News
Here's the latest news from AirUCI — our events, our people, our science.
2019
AirUCI faculty Jack Brouwer has written an opinion piece in the Sunday, November 24th edition of USA Today. His topic is repurposing oil and natural gas pipelines after we have moved beyond fossil fuels to store hydrogen which can be created using electolysis, a technology that converts electricity into hydrogen in gaseous form. This carbon-free hydrogen gas can then be used to fuel the same type of low-emission power plants that are already in use today — zero-emission fuel cell plants. AirUCI's partner institute, APEP, has tested this technology for over 10 years, and Jack is advocating for creative uses like this for pipelines.
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AirUCI faculty Steve Davis has been named among the most highly-cited researchers for 2019. This list recognizes world-class researchers selected for their exceptional research performance, demonstrated by production of multiple highly-cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and year in 'Web of Science'. Steve, who is also frequently interviewed and quoted in radio programs and publications like Newsweek Magazine, Science, and Nature, was also selected in this 'Web of Science' list for 2018. Congratulations, Steve!
On Friday, October 25th, AirUCI co-Director Barbara Finlayson-Pitts will be among the presenters at the Interdisciplinary Research Showcase and Workshop, a day-long event to be held on campus. Workshop sessions will address a wide range of topics of interest to UCI researchers, including hands-on tools for promoting effective cross-disciplinary collaboration and best practices for leading and sustaining interdisciplinary research and training programs. Barb will discuss the history and extraordinary collaborative successes of AirUCI. RSVP to attend this event
An article on the Voice of America web site quotes AirUCI faculty Jack Brouwer on issues surrounding wildfire risks posed by California's electrical grid. Distributed power production could reduce the need for transmission lines in high risk areas and allow “local production of renewable electricity, for example distributed solar and battery energy storage. Those are very important technologies for avoiding wildfires,” said Jack. He adds that new fuel cell technology, similar to that being introduced in cars, can create more local generation and notes that the university’s medical center gets 30 percent of its power from fuel cells. Read the article
AirUCI faculty Jack Brouwer is quoted in a New York Times article on the decision by PG&E to conduct rolling blackouts as a method for reducing fire danger in California. It’s an incredible travesty, this sort of really crude and unsophisticated approach for dealing with what is a very serious issue,” said Jack. “We have technological solutions for this that exist. Unfortunately, he says, California regulations and planning have been “insufficient for that technology to be used instead of just turning the power off.” [Subscription required, campus-wide access provided by UCI Libraries. Sign-up here: AccessNYT.com]
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AirUCI faculty Manabu Shiraiwa will serve as a panelist at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) symposium on the chemistry of indoor environments. This all-day event will be held in Washington DC on September 19, 2019. Manabu's panel topic is "Indoor Chemistry Problems and Solutions" and his talk is entitled "Bringing the Data Together: The Modelling Consortium for Chemistry of Indoor Environments (MOCCIE)."
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AirUCI faculty Steve Davis was interviewed on National Public Radio's All Things Considered program on September 2nd. Ailsa Chang asked Steve why global carbon emissions continue to rise, despite efforts and pledges to cut them, and she mentioned his recent study on sources of carbon emissions we're already committed to. "I think the point of all of this work is that there's a lot of inertia in the problem itself. Climate change is something that is going to take decades to repair. So even if we figured out a miracle energy technology tomorrow, we've got a lot of stuff out there that we have to worry about retiring and getting rid of before we solve this problem," Steve said. Read the article
AirUCI postdoc Nanna Myllys (Smith group) received the 2019 Early Career Scientist Aerosologist award from the Nordic Society for Aerosol Research (NOSA), in recognition of her exceptional work as a postdoc at AirUCI and as a graduate student at the University of Helsinki. This was conferred during the European Aerosol Conference in Gothenburg, Sweden, held August 25-30, 2020.
