Current Lab Members

East End, Anguilla B.W.I

BS: Environmental Chemistry

UC San Diego (2023)  

SIO: Fall 2025 

Marine Chemistry PhD student

Tobie is interested in studying the transfer of pollutants from bodies of water into the atmosphere. His research focuses mainly on toxic heavy metals from anthropogenic sources and how they affect the environment and human health.

Email: tjbloom@ucsd.edu

Imperial Beach, CA

BS: Chemical Biology

UC Berkeley (2024)  

SIO: Fall 2024 

Marine Chemistry PhD student

Aurora is focused on understanding how freshwater plumes mix and transport in the coastal ocean through field work. She aims to incorporate modeling in her research to characterize the transport and flux of pollution in the ocean and into the atmosphere.  

Email: afczajkowski@ucsd.edu

Houston, Texas

BA: Chemistry + Political Science 

Claremont McKenna College (2022)  

Chemistry: Fall 2022 

Atmospheric and Analytical Chemistry PhD student

Leila is interested in exploring the oxidation reactions of the environment through radical chemistry. She hopes to investigate the role of seaweed and other marine species' emissions via online chemical ionization mass spectrometry to elucidate their contribution to net global VOC emissions.  

Email: lelmasri@ucsd.edu

Orange County, CA

BS: Chemistry

UCSD (2022)

Chemistry: Winter 2023 

Chemistry Master's student

Chris joined as a Lab Tech performing field work to investigate potential human health effects attributable to sea spray aerosols occurring in polluted environments. He is now a graduate student pursuing a M.S. in chemistry with a research project utilizing mass spectrometry under the guidance of Prof. Skip Pomeroy and Prof. Prather. 

Email: cfrobeni@ucsd.edu

Iowa City, Iowa

BA: Chemistry

University of Iowa (2017)

Chemistry: Fall 2022 

Atmospheric & Analytical Chemistry PhD student 

Following graduation, Justin served in the US Army as a Chemical Officer where he led a Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and Explosives (CBRNE) Response Team. He left the military in 2022 to pursue his PhD at UCSD where he studies biogenic volatile organic compounds and how they impact new particle formation in marine environments.

Email: jdhamlin@ucsd.edu

Corona, CA

BS: Ecology & Evolutionary Biology 

University of California, Irvine (2022)

SIO: Fall 2023 

Marine Chemistry PhD student

Jena was a CAICE SURP student in the Prather Lab in 2022 where she studied the chemical characterization of SOARS using TD-GCMS. 

Email: j1herbst@ucsd.edu

Oahu, Hawai'i 

BS: Microbiology 

UCSD  (2022)

SIO: Fall 2022 

Marine Biology PhD student

Maile's research broadly seeks to classify microbial communities and how they influence ecological systems. She will combine culture independent and dependent methods to simplify the dynamics within microbial communities so they can be manipulated and applied to today’s issues. This work will be completed under the guidance of the Prather and Zeigler labs at SIO.

Email: mheyer@ucsd.edu 

---

BS: Chemistry 

University of California, Irvine (2024)

Chemistry: Fall 2024

Atmospheric and Analytical Chemistry PhD student 

Patricia's research encompasses atmospheric gas oxidation in polluted regions. Their research also focuses on instrumentation development for gas and particle composition analysis. 

Email: pmmorris@ucsd.edu

--

BS: Chemistry

UCSD (2025) 

Chemistry: Fall 2025 

Chemistry Master's student

Elizabeth began her research journey in 2022 as a community college student through CAICE SURP. She is now pursuing an M.S. in Chemistry at UC San Diego, where her work focuses on understanding how pollutants such as PFAS transfer from aquatic systems into the atmosphere. Her research aims to improve our understanding of contaminant pathways in the environment and their broader impacts.

Email: e1pogue@ucsd.edu

Cheverly, Maryland

BA: Chemistry (Environmental Science) & Anthropology

Colby College (2025) 

SIO: Fall 2025 

Marine Chemistry & Geochemistry PhD student

With a background in analytical environmental chemistry and environmental justice, Sophia is interested in expanding understandings of the ocean-atmosphere interface and the impact of climate change on pollutant fate pathways.

Email: sriazisekowski@ucsd.edu

Undergraduate student

Undergraduate student

Undergraduate student

Undergraduate student

Undergraduate student

Director, Environmental and Complex Analysis Laboratory

https://caice.ucsd.edu/ecal/

Email: narakawa@ucsd.edu

Prather Group Assistant

Email: mcastrejon@ucsd.edu 

Principal Lab Mechanician

Research & Development Engineer 

Email: jmayer@ucsd.edu

Research & Development Engineer

Email: gsandstrom@ucsd.edu