News

10/17/23 Article published in MIT News highlights our recent study which investigates the indoor air quality implications of the use of 222 nm germicidal ultraviolet light. The project was led by Tori Barber (now at UCLA) and Matthew Goss, with contributions from other members of the group (Lesly Franco, Lexy LeMar, Erik Helstrom), as well researchers from Harvard (Yaowei Li, Frank Keutsch) and Aerodyne (Manjula Canagaratna).
10/2/23 Erik, Nadia, Lesly, Hannah, Lexy, Amanda, Matthew, and Jesse (not pictured) attended the 2023 AAAR conference in Portland, Oregon.
9/1/23 The group welcomes Seamus Frey, an incoming first-year grad student in Civil and Environmental Engineering! Seamus did his undergraduate studies at Bowdoin College, studying environmental chemistry.
7/12/23 The group has a goodbye dinner for Tori Barber (who's heading off to UCLA's Dept. of Chemistry & Biochemistry), at a piano bar famous for its use of 222 nm lamps.
11/30/22 Eben Cross and David Hagan, alums of the group and founders of QuantAQ, speak with some out-of-town visitors about air quality sensing. (Credit: Boston Globe)

9/15/22 Huge congratulations to Dr. Tori Barber, who received an Early Career Researcher talk award at the 2022 IGAC conference! Tori's presentation covered her work on RO2 oxidation in multiple phases.
9/5/22 Amanda, Erik, Matthew, Lesly, Nadia, Lexy, and Jesse travel to Athens, Greece for the International Aerosol Conference (IAC).
4/1/22 The group welcomes a new postdoc, Dr. Hannah Kenagy! Hannah got her PhD from UC-Berkeley, and will be working jointly in our and Colette Heald's group.
4/1/22 Lexy LeMar, a first-year grad student in Chemical Engineering, joins the group. Lexy did her undergraduate studies at Caltech; welcome Lexy!
2/28/22 Amanda, Matthew, and Erik travel to NIST in Gaithersburg, MD to test out their new low-cost VOC array in a controlled indoor environment, as part of the CASA (Chemical Assessment of Surfaces and Air) experiment.
1/7/22 Amy and Jesse, along with 4 other instructors and 14 undergrads, travel to the Island of Hawai'i for the annual TREX fieldwork trip, where they set up a new sensor network to measure volcanic air quality around the island. Big thanks to MIT CEE, EPA, NSF, and QuantAQ for making this possible!
12/20/21 Huge congratulations to Josh Moss, who just successfully defended his PhD! Dr. Moss's thesis is titled "Laboratory and Mechanistic Studies of Volatile Organic Carbon Oxidation Systems in the Atmosphere".
11/1/21 Article on MIT News on our our new study measuring how consumer-grade oxidation-based air cleaners affect indoor VOCs. The project was led by Qing Ye, with many co-authors from the group (Tori barber, Erik Helstrom, Lesly Franco, Amy Hrdina, Matthew Goss, Nadia Tahsini) as well as Harvard (Josh Shutter, Yaowei Li, Josh Cox, and Frank Keutsch) and Aerodyne (Jordan Krechmer and Manjula Canagaratna).
10/18/21 Most of the group - Amy Hrdina, Erik Helstrom, Lesly Franco, Matthew Goss, Nadia Tahsini, Qing Ye, Tori Barber - "went" to the AAAR Annual Conference to present their recent research. Here's hoping we can all attend in person next year!
6/30/21 MIT News published an article on our work monitoring volcanic air pollution during the KÄ«lauea's 2018 Lower East Rift Zone Eruption. The paper, by former postdoc Ben Crawford, can be found here.
1/16/21 Welcome to Nadia Tahsini, a new grad student in the group! Nadia is a 1st year graduate student in ChemE; she did her undergraduate studies at Stanford.
6/1/20 Welcome to the newest member of the group, Lesly Franco! Lesly is a 2nd year graduate student in EAPS, coming to us from Dan Cziczo's group.
1/29/20 Congrats to Josh Moss, who just won an AGU Outstanding Student Presentation Award! Josh's talk was on using chamber measurements and mechanistic predictions to better constrain our understanding of atmospheric oxidation processes.
1/25/20 Results from this year's TREX class (co-led by Jesse, co-TA'd by Josh Moss) were highlighted in a local newspaper, West Hawaii Today.
11/25/19 Mark Goldman is now a doctor! Mark was co-advised by Bill Green, and his thesis is titled "Illuminating reaction pathways in low-temperature combustion, pyrolysis and atmospheric oxidation". Congrats Mark!
10/07/19 The group welcomes its 4th new member in 5 weeks, Dr. Amy Hrdina. Amy received her PhD in chemistry from U. Toronto. Welcome Amy!
10/04/19 Congrats to David Hagan, who successfully defended his PhD! The title of his thesis is "Measuring Ambient Air Quality Using Low-Cost Sensors".
10/01/19 David Hagan's new paper on inferring PM sources in Delhi using low-cost sensors is written up in MIT News.
9/30/19 Dr. Victoria Barber joins the group as a new postdoc. Tori received her PhD in chemistry from U. Penn. Welcome Tori!
9/01/19 Our group welcomes two new grad students, Matthew Goss (Williams College, chemistry) and Erik Helstrom (Columbia, physics). Welcome Matthew and Erik!
7/02/19 Our first annual Super Lab Cleanup is a success!
6/03/19 Our group welcomes visiting researchers Ye Tao and Qianwen Shi from Jen Murphy's group at UToronto!
2/04/19 Our group welcomes new postdoc Qing Ye! Qing recieved her Ph.D. in Chemistry and Engineering and Public Policy from CMU. Welcome Qing!
12/19/18 Congrats to Chris Lim, who just successfully defended his PhD thesis! Chris will be starting a postdoc position at U.Toronto.
9/25/18 Abby, Ben, David, Chris, and Jesse travel to Takamatsu, Japan to present at the 14th IGAC conference. David has a plenary presentation on his work on low-cost AQ sensors in India.
9/01/18 Amanda Gao joins our group as a new grad student. Amanda's undergrad was at Caltech, where she majored in Chemical Engineering as well as English. Welcome Amanda!
5/20/18 Ben, David, and Jesse travel to Hawai'i to install air quality (SO2 and PM) sensors around the island, in order to provide the community with information on the AQ impacts of the Lower East Rift Zone eruption.
5/11/18 Big congratulations to Jon Franklin, who just successfully defended his PhD thesis!! The title of Jon's thesis is "Measurement and Characterization of Low Volatility Organic Compounds in the Atmosphere".
4/10/18 Ben Crawford and James Rowe both receive poster awards for the MIT CEHS/SRP poster session. Congrats Ben and James!
2/26/18 Our work on carbon closure in laboratory studies has just been published in Nature Chemistry. The lead author was Gabriel Isaacman-Vanwertz, with contributions by several current and former group members (Rachel O'Brien, Chris Lim, Jon Franklin, James Hunter, and Josh Moss) as well as collaborators from Aerodyne, Berkeley, and Stony Brook.
1/15/18 David Hagan's paper on electrochemical sensor calibration has been published in Atmospheric Measurement Techniques. This work was a result of our TREX class and our EPA sensor project. Co-authors include Gabriel Isaacman-VanWertz, Jon Franklin, Lisa Wallace (Hawaii DOH), Ben Kocar, and Colette Heald.
1/08/18 The group welcomes still another new member: Dr. Kevin Nihill, who received his PhD in chemistry from U. Chicago. Welcome Kevin!
11/01/17 The group welcomes yet another new member: Dr. Ben Crawford, who comes to us from University of Reading, and before that University of British Columbia ( where he got his PhD). Ben will be working on our Hawai'i air quality project, and will move there later next year.
9/05/17 The group welcomes two new members: Dr. Abigail Koss, a postdoc who got her PhD in chemistry from CU-Boulder (and before that was a UROP in the group during her undergraduate days!), and James Rowe, a PhD student from Georgia Tech. Welcome Abby and James!