News

Here's the latest news from AirUCI — our events, our people, our science.

 

2022

Wednesday, May 25, 2022

At the Chemistry Department's annual Lee Dinner held May 25th, AirUCI was again well represented.  Natalie Smith (Nizkorodov group) received the Joan Rowland Award, Jinlai Wei (Shiraiwa group) received the American Institute of Chemists Graduate Student Award, Alexandra Klodt (Nizkorodov group) received one of two awards for Contributions to the Chemistry Department Teaching Program by a TA - continuing, and Lena Gerritz (Nizkorodov group) received the award for Contributions to the Chemistry Department Teaching Program by a first-year TA.  The Michael E. Gebel award was presented to Megan Rocha, Adam Thomas (Smith group), and Khawla Mustafa. Congratulations, all!

Friday, May 20, 2022

AirUCI undergrad Cathy Wong (Finlayson-Pitts group) will be presenting a poster at UCI's 29th annual Undergraduate Symposium to be held the weekend of May 20th.  This event is hosted each year by the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program and has become an important event for promoting student engagement with faculty, industry leaders, and other students.  Details

Friday, May 20, 2022

AirUCI faculty Andrea de Vizcaya Ruiz is quoted in an article in Self describing how microplastics—long a problem in the environment—have been detected in humans with potential adverse effects on our health.  “This is the first study to identify plastics that we know are in containers, plastic bottles, clothing, and other products that we use, inside of people,” Andrea says.  "A biodegradable item such as a banana naturally breaks down until it finally dissolves.  But many plastics never decompose completely.  They get smaller and smaller over time, but the pieces remain in our environments as pollution for hundreds of years, resulting in secondary microplastics."  Read the article

Friday, May 20, 2022

AirUCI faculty Steve Davis is quoted in a Bloomberg article about his recent study on agricultural land use that is leading to increased deforestation.  Wealthy nations increasing their imports of food are outsourcing land-use emissions to countries such as Brazil and Indonesia.  “The land-use change problem needs to be front and center on our radar,” said Steve. “These land-use emissions are substantial enough to threaten international climate goals even if fossil fuel emissions are drastically reduced.”  Read the article

Tuesday, May 17, 2022

AirUCI faculty Donald Blake is ranked 20th in the world and 11th in the U.S. among the Top 1000 Scientists in the Area of Environmental Scientists!  The prominent academic platform Research.com has released their 2022 list and we are proud that Don's work is recognized so prominently and so deservedly.  AirUCI is well represented in this list, as two other of our faculty, Alex Guenther (65th/37th) and Michael Prather (267th/143rd), are also among the top 150 of this elite group of 1000 scientists. Congratulations, Don, Alex and Michael!  Read the article

Sunday, May 15, 2022

Several AirUCI faculty and researchers attended and presented at the Molecular Level Understanding of Atmospheric Aerosols conference (MOUAA) held at the Lake Arrowhead Lodge May 15-20, 2022.  Barbara Finlayson-Pitts and Manabu Shiraiwa were both invited speakers, Sergey Nizkorodov and Jim Smith both served as session chairs, Lisa Wingen and Veronique Perraud each presented posters at this prestigious event that attracts the most noted experts from around the world.  Conference details

Friday, May 6, 2022

AirUCI faculty Steve Davis has published a study showing that land-use change – including clearing of carbon-absorbing forests to create farms and pastures – contributed about 3/4 of the amount of greenhouse gases driven by the global trade of agricultural goods between 2004 and 2017.  “Roughly a quarter of all human greenhouse gas emissions are from land use,” said Steve. “Our work shows that large shares of these emissions in lower-income countries are related to consumption in more developed countries.”  Read the article

Monday, May 2, 2022

AirUCI faculty Jack Brouwer is quoted in a May 2nd Bloomberg article on hydrogen as a replacement for natural gas as a cleaner energy source.  Utility companies are moving rapidly to explore hydrogen as a "decarbonizer" or even a replacement for natural gas, especially to large customers, but there are issues.  For example, it can degrade metal pipelines and there are limits to the amount of fuel that can be carried in plastic pipelines, more commonly used in local gas distribution systems.  Read the article

Wednesday, April 20, 2022

AirUCI faculty Jun Wu is quoted in an article on pregnancy and air pollution published April 20th in The 19th.  While the main topic is wildfire smoke and its health effects, Jun describes risks to pregnancy due to multiple sources of air pollution.  “What we found is that for women living in areas with higher air pollution, the risk of developing gestational diabetes is higher,” she said. "Their babies are also at higher risk of being born preterm."  Read the article

Wednesday, April 20, 2022

AirUCI faculty Jack Brouwer was interviewed for the PBS NewsHour on April 20th.  The discussion was about hydrogen as an alternative energy source, and PBS correspondent Miles O'Brien visited Jack at UCI to report on hydrogen cars and the issues and history of hydrogen as fuel.  View the broadcast and read the transcript

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