Prather Research Group

Andy Ault will defend his PhD work on 7/16/10 in Natural Sciences Building, room 1205 at 1pm. His thesis is titled "Investigations into the Impact of Transported Particles on Air Pollution and Climate Using Aerosol Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry." The defense is open to the public.

Congratulations to Professor Kim Prather for her recent appointment to the Distinguished Chair in Atmospheric Chemistry in the Division of Physical Sciences at UC San Diego.  Prof. Prather will be the inaugural holder of this honor and will hold it until her retirement.  Chemistry and Biochemistry department chair Prof. Robert Continetti noted, "The award is a direct reflection of the high regard in which she is held by the UCSD academic community."  Please join us all in congratulating her on such a high honor!

On Tuesday, 5/25, UC San Diego will present Lindsay Hatch with a Sustainability Award!  The honor signifies her notable efforts outside the Lab toward furthering the stated campus goals in the realm of environmental sustainabillity.  The UCSD Advisory Committee on Sustainability intends to make sustainability part of the ongoing education, research, planning, operation or outreach programs at UC San Diego, as well as sharing these ideals with the campus community and public.  Congratulations to Lindsay!

After a long drive, and a backhoe to plow the access road to the sampling site, the Prather Group's Mobile Lab has been successfully deployed at the Sugar Pine Dam in Tahoe National Forest near Foresthill, CA.  The group will be investigating the interplay of aerosols and precipitation in California, while another team of Prather Group members deploys a similar setup in Mariposa, CA as part of the CalWater field campaign, a collaboration with  NOAA, the California Energy Commission, and the US Geological Survey.  Jessie, Liz, and Doug will be making continuous measurements wi

Professor Prather will receive the 2010 American Chemical Society Creative Advances in Environental Sciency and Technology and was selected as a 2010 American Geophysical Union Fellow and a 2009 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

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Meagan and Liz are currently in the field with ATOFMS Elwood at the Dirty Socks site in Owens Lake, CA. They are looking at dust particles - specifically how the chemistry of the dust changes as it reacts with atmospheric gases and how these changes affect the particles’ ability to nucleate cloud droplets.
http://ovcweb.org/
http://www.gbuapcd.org/data/owenslakedata.htm

Two postdoctoral fellow positions available in the Prather group to study the impact of aerosols on climate. Three upcoming projects in California this coming year will investigate and characterize atmospheric aerosols and their impact on clouds and regional climate. One study will focus on determining how soot or black carbon is impacting our climate. A person with a strong radiative forcing or optics background would be ideally suited to this project. Two other projects will focus on atmospheric and precipitation studies.

Kerri Pratt presented her research from her dissertation on Monday, 6/29/09.  The abstract of her presentation is given below.

Professor Prather has a viewpoint in ChemSusChem  discussing what we know about how aerosols change climate and how this knowledge is changing as analytical techniques improve.