News

On February 29, 2016, I’ll be speaking at Nerd Nite Edmonton. Here’s what I’ll be talking about!

Dust: The Little Particle That Could
Over a billion tons of dust are emitted into the atmosphere each year from desert regions in Africa and Central Asia. Once emitted, dust particles can be transported around the world. During their travels, they promote cloud formation, fertilize oceanic and terrestrial ecosystems, and influence air quality in cities. I’ll talk about how and why these small particles have an outsize influence on our climate and health, and about how we can make and study dust in the lab.

This will also be the first official Styler Group outing—pictures to follow!

— Sarah

On February 24, 2016, I’ll be giving a talk as part of the CIC Edmonton Section speaker series.

More details to follow; in the meantime, for more information about CIC Edmonton, visit their website!

— Sarah

Last autumn, during my time as a postdoctoral researcher in Leipzig, Germany, I was part of a research team that measured the composition of ‘urban film’ or ‘urban grime’, the complex mixture of chemicals that forms on surfaces in polluted environments.

Although our experiment was simple—we placed glass beads in a sampler located in a high-traffic location in the Leipzig city centre, and then analyzed their composition as a function of atmospheric exposure time—the results are turning out to be really exciting, and the international news media agrees!

Click here to read what the BBC has to say about our work, and to find out how photochemical reactions on buildings can influence urban air quality!

— Sarah

From August 2 until August 7, I will be in Waterville Valley, New Hampshire, at the 2015 Gordon Research Conference in Atmospheric Chemistry.

There, I’ll present my laboratory observations of photochemical HONO and VOC production by urban surface film samples.

These experiments were performed during my postdoctoral work at the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research (TROPOS).

— Sarah