Aerosols in Atmospheric Chemistry

Yue Zhang is an assistant professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences, College of Geosciences at Texas A&M University. He received his Ph.D. degree at Harvard University and was previously an ACCESS XIV member, an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow, and a NIH Postdoctoral Training Grant recipient. His research aims to understand the fundamental mechanisms and processes that impact air quality and climate, as well as the health effects of aerosols through laboratory experiments and field measurement. A first author paper of Zhang won the Best Papers of Environmental Science and Technology Letters Journal by the American Chemical Society. He wrote the Preface and Chapters 1, 3, and 5, and also served as editor of this e-book.

Pengfei Liu is an assistant professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Institute of Technology. He has previously received his PhD and Postdoc training at Harvard University. His research interests lie primarily in the field of air pollution and its interactions with climate change and human health. Liu’s laboratory currently works on developing new techniques to characterize organic aerosol particles, building emission inventories across multiple timescales, and assessing the health effects and disparities of air pollution. He wrote Chapters 3 and 6, and served as editor of this e-book.

Yuemei Han is currently a research scientist at the Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences in Xi’an, China. She received her Ph.D. in Earth and Environmental Sciences from Nagoya University in Japan and held postdoctoral positions at Harvard University and Environment and Climate Change Canada. Her research interests focus on atmospheric chemistry, air quality, and aerosol sciences, in particular, the molecular composition, formation and transformation, and the fate of atmospheric organic aerosols. She wrote CHAPTERS 4 and 6 of this e-book.

Yongjie Li obtained his BSc degree from Peking University (PKU) in 2004 and his Ph.D. degree from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) in 2010. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow at HKUST and Harvard University, before joining the University of Macau in 2015. He is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Macau. His research interests include a number of aspects in aerosol chemistry, for instance, real-time aerosol characterization, chemical reactions in aerosol formation and transformation, and microphysical properties of aerosol particles. He is now working on the photochemical degradation of light-absorbing organic compounds and the interplay between hygroscopic growth, chemical reaction, and phase state of organic aerosols. He wrote CHAPTER 2 of this e-book.

Qi Chen earned her Ph.D. in 2011 from Harvard University and then did her postdoctoral study at MIT from 2012 to 2014. She became a faculty at Peking University (PKU) in September 2014 and started to lead a mobile laboratory and a roof site with advanced online mass spectrometers. Her current research involves field, laboratory, and modeling studies of the sources and formation mechanisms of aerosol particles in polluted urban environments. She wrote CHAPTER 2 of this e-book.

Mikinori Kuwata is currently an assistant professor at Peking University, after working at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore as a faculty. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo and worked at Harvard University as a postdoctoral fellow. His current research interest is in atmospheric chemistry, especially focusing on the physical and chemical characteristics of aerosol particles. He has also been working on wildfire haze induced by tropical peatland fire in the equatorial Asian region. He wrote CHAPTER 3 of this e-book.

Scot T. Martin is currently a Gordon McKay Professor of Environmental Engineering and has previously held positions as an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a NOAA Postdoctoral Fellow in Climate and Global Change at MIT. His research focuses on engineering solutions to the major environmental challenges presently facing the world. Martin’s laboratory works specifically on problems of air and water pollution and their effects on climate change. His current research has a focus on connections among plant emissions of volatile organic compounds, particle-phase secondary organic material and climate. Martin is currently working to complete a book on aerosol science and technology and is developing a HarvardX course on thermodynamics. He wrote the Preface and is the editor of this e-book.