The Next Wave — our student researchers
Julia Montoya-Aguilera
AirUCI student Julia Montoya-Aguilera just graduated from UCI this summer with a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Chemistry, and she has a remarkable life story. She was one of six children born to immigrant parents who struggled financially, and even lost their house to debt. While both parents worked, Julia cared for her younger siblings to help support their family.
Despite these obstacles, she entered Cal-State Los Angeles as a first-generation student and graduated with a B.S. in Chemistry in 2015 with an impressive amount of research and extracurricular work. At Cal-State LA, Julia worked in the environmental chemistry laboratory of Prof. Krishna Foster, who from 1998-2000 was a postdoctoral fellow in the Finlayson-Pitts group.
Julia started her Ph.D. studies at UCI in June 2015 with the Competitive Edge summer program and joined the research group of Prof. Sergey Nizkorodov, co-Director of the AirUCI Institute. Julia’s research focuses on the formation of nitrogen-containing organic compounds from indole. She has also been studying new ways of forming nitrogen-containing organic compounds via poorly understood chemical reactions between ammonia and multifunctional organic compounds found in atmospheric particulate matter. These compounds are very important components of "brown carbon" in particles, where they cause strong light absorption and produce spectacular colors during sunsets.
Both projects represent a highly collaborative effort between two AirUCI groups, with the modeling done by Prof. Donald Dabdub and his group from UCI’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the experiments done by the Nizkorodov group in the Department of Chemistry.
Julia has five published papers and is currently working on two more. Her Ph.D. thesis research is improving the chemical representation in air pollution models, which are widely used by agencies such as the EPA.
Julia has recently accepted a position with the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD), where she will apply her research expertise to help keep the air clean in Southern California. Last but not least, Julia is a new mom. Her son, Joaquin Juan Aguilera, was born in May 2020. Prior to his arrival, he was an active participant in a number of laboratory experiments done by his mom, traveled to an AAAR conference to co-present a talk and poster, was present while Julia was interviewing for her new job, and was there while she was writing her Ph.D. dissertation. It is only a matter of time before Joaquin is doing research experiments himself!
