AirUCI's Brenna Biggs, graduate student in the Blake research group, has been selected by UCI's Sustainability Resource Center to be a Carbon Neutrality Initiative (CNI) Fellow for the 2019-20 academic year. These paid opportunities are sponsored by the UC President’s Carbon Neutrality Initiative and the fellowships require a yearlong commitment. Recipients work on exciting projects across a range of topics which may include zero waste, energy justice, community resilience, food security, urban gardening, community-aligned carbon offsets, and campus sustainability engagement. Way to go, Brenna!
News
Here's the latest news from AirUCI — our events, our people, our science.
2019
Thursday, June 13, 2019
AirUCI is proud to announce that Anton Ni, who is graduating this month from University High School in Irvine, has placed among the top four competitors in the National Chemistry Olympiad which was held at the University of Maryland June 2-13, 2019. Anton will be going on to compete in Paris at the 51st International Chemistry Olympiad to be held July 21-30, 2019. Anton has been assisting in the Finlayson-Pitts labs over the past two summers, conducting research, compiling data, and contributing to published papers. He will be starting university this fall at MIT. We're thrilled, Anton — way to go! Read the article in C&EN News
Tuesday, June 4, 2019
AirUCI faculty Steve Davis and his postdocs, Yue Qin and Dan Tong, are among the co-authors on an article in the journal Nature Sustainability which finds that a combination of water scarcity and inflexible demand puts the world’s largest river basins — serving a fifth of the world's population — at risk. Climate change-driven incidents, such as droughts and heat waves, are growing in frequency, duration, and intensity and increasingly could threaten access to an essential resource for agriculture, industry, humans, and livestock, not to mention native species. The UCI-led study examines consumption patterns and suggests resilience strategies. Read the article
Wednesday, May 22, 2019
At the annual Chemistry Department Edward K.C. Lee dinner held on May 22, 2019, the following AirUCI students won awards:
- Vahe Baboomian, grad student, received one of the two Departmental Safety Awards.
- Lauren Fleming, grad student, was awarded the Edward K.C. Lee Award.
- The Michael Gebel Award was presented to grad students Sabrina Chee, Brenna Biggs, and Hurik Muradyan.
Congratulations to all!
Monday, May 20, 2019
On May 20th, Jason Low of the South Coast Air Quality Management District was guest speaker at a Chemistry 241/MAE 260 class taught jointly by AirUCI faculty Barbara Finlayson-Pitts and Jack Brouwer. He spoke to the students about "New Paradigms of Tackling Air Toxics" and answered questions about related topics.
Dr. Low serves as Assistant Deputy Executive Officer at South Coast AQMD and did his undergraduate and Ph.D studies at UCI in the Ralph Cicerone research group at the same time as several of our researchers. He is shown here with Barbara and Drs. Lisa Wingen and Weihong Wang, who are AirUCI Project Scientists in the Finlayson-Pitts research group.
Wednesday, May 15, 2019
Congratulations to AirUCI graduate student Lauren Fleming (Nizkorodov group)! She has been selected to participate in the 15th Atmospheric Chemistry Colloquium for Emerging Senior Scientists (ACCESS XV), which will be convened July 25-28, 2019 at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, New York. She will also attend the Gordon Research Conference (GRC) as ACCESS is convened every other year since 1991 in conjunction with the Gordon Research Conference (GRC) in Atmospheric Chemistry. The ACCESS colloquium is exceptionally competitive... well done Lauren!
Tuesday, May 7, 2019
AirUCI Founder, Co-Director, and Professor Barbara Finlayson-Pitts has won the 2019 Environment Prize from the Royal Society of Chemistry. The prize is awarded every other year for outstanding contributions to the chemical sciences in the area of environment, sustainability, and energy. Barb received this prestigious award for her groundbreaking research identifying new processes in the formation of photochemical air pollution and establishing the molecular basis of reactions occurring at environmental interfaces — way to go, Barb! Read the article
Saturday, April 27, 2019
AirUCI faculty Jack Brouwer has written an op-ed for the April 27, 2019 edition of the Los Angeles Daily News that talks about a novel energy storage solution. As Director of UCI's National Fuel Cell Research Center, AirUCI's partner organization, he describes how electricity can be converted via electrolysis to hydrogen gas which is then easily stored and available as an alternative energy source. After a decade of development and two years of testing, Jack and his team are confident that this is a workable solution for drastically reducing carbon emissions. Read the article on the NFCRC site
Friday, April 26, 2019
On April 26, 2019 AirUCI grad student Annie Rohrbacher (Finlayson-Pitts group) won the UCI AGS Graduate Research Symposium Poster Award for her current Ph.D research work. Her poster was entitled “Atmospheric Fate of Neonicotinoid Insecticides as Pure Compounds and in Commercial Formulations”. Congratulations, Annie!!
Wednesday, April 10, 2019
This Wednesday evening, April 10th, PBS will premiere their new documentary entitled Ozone Hole: How We Saved the Planet at 7 pm Pacific Time (possibly 10 pm – check your TV schedule). In Los Angeles and Orange Counties, it will be broadcast on Channel 50, KOCE. The program documents the background, discoveries, and solutions to the problem of CFCs accumulating in the atmosphere and endangering the planet. The research of Sherry Rowland and Mario Molina is highlighted, and the issue is presented as a successful outcome in the environmental protection movement, one of the "wins" that show that we can accomplish positive change in our efforts to preserve the planet.
