AirUCI graduate student Brenna Biggs (Blake research group) was selected as a science mentor this summer for NASA's Student Airborne Research Program (SARP). She mentored seven undergraduate students that came to UC Irvine from around the U.S. for two months. They spent 2 weeks in Palmdale, where she showed them how to collect samples aboard the NASA DC-8 airplane. Upon their return to Irvine, Brenna helped them select, execute, and present their projects to NASA administrators. The seven visiting students proclaimed this a great summer!
News
Here's the latest news from AirUCI — our events, our people, our science.
2019
Saturday, August 3, 2019
AirUCI grad student Brian Hwang (Shiraiwa group) is volunteering as a poster judge at the Southern California Undergraduate Research Symposium on Saturday, August 3rd. This Symposium is put on by the UCI Chemistry Department (with NSF support) and is hosted by Professors Liz Jarvo and Alan Heyduk every summer. Undergraduate researchers from the SoCal area are invited to UCI to present posters on their own research, to hear science presentations by UCI faculty and graduate students, and to get information on applying to graduate school and fellowships.
Tuesday, July 30, 2019
AirUCI is proud to announce that Anton Ni, who graduated in June from University High School in Irvine, has placed among the top 28 competitors in Paris at the 51st International Chemistry Olympiad held July 21-30, 2019 — and therefore has received a gold medal! 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. Way to go, Anton — we're thrilled and proud!
Friday, July 19, 2019
As of Friday, July 19th, the front page of the UCI Chemistry web site is featuring AirUCI's Anton Ni and his fellow team member Edward Jin, both of University High School, showing support for their trip to the 51st International ACS Chemistry Olympiad being held July 21-30, 2019 in Paris, France.
Read the previous News item
Monday, July 1, 2019
AirUCI faculty Steve Davis is extensively quoted in an article in National Geographic that discusses his study, which was published in Nature, on the number of fossil fuel power plants currently built (as well as cars, factories, and buildings). If these operate normally for their expected life spans, the CO2 generated will almost certainly exceed the 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) goal of the Paris Climate Accords.
“Our study is dead simple,” said Steve. To limit warming to 1.5°C., not only should no new fossil-fuel-using infrastructure be built, ever again, some existing power plants need to shut down early—and yet today many new power plants are under construction.
Read the article
Read the New Atlas article on this study which also quotes AirUCI postdoc Dan Tong
Friday, June 28, 2019
AirUCI faculty Manabu Shiraiwa and Doug Tobias are key members of the MOCCIE working group which, along with members from several other universities here and abroad, studies indoor air pollution. A recent paper published in Nature explains how skin oils react with ozone and other gases to produce a range of volatile and semi-volatile gases and substances, creating a "Pig Pen" effect, almost like a cloud of these substances. AirUCI postdoc Pascale Lakey (Shiraiwa group) and our collaborator Donghyun Rim are also co-authors on this paper. Read the article
Thursday, June 20, 2019
AirUCI grad student Andrea Rohrbacher in the Finlayson-Pitts group has received a Ridge-2-Reef Fellowship sponsored by the National Science Foundation. This program is offered at UCI to provide research training in urban ecosystems management, and Annie has been quite active over the past two years. This fellowship will support her continued training following an environmental solutions practicum that facilitates cross-disciplinary interaction to address real-world management problems. Congratulations, Annie!
Friday, June 14, 2019
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!
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
