Prof. Westervelt has been awarded tenure and promoted to Lamont Associate Research Professor, senior staff, effective July 1, 2026. Congratulations to our PI!
Prof. Godwin Opinde and Eng. Tedy Mutisya Mwendwa wrapped up a 1 month visit to the Westervelt group, which included a trip to ASIC in LA and also time in the lab. They interacted with group members and contributed to group research projects. Photo below
Congratulations to Joe Amooli who successfully presented his PhD dissertation proposal today!
The group was busy and active at the 2026 Air Sensors International Conference held in Los Angeles!
- Prof. Westervelt was the conference chair and gave 3 research presentations on sensor work in Africa and beyond
- Undergraduate student Polina Goldberg presented orally on her work on NYC congestion pricing and air quality
- PhD student Sai Deepak Pinakana presented 2 talks and 1 poster on his work on ultrafine particles, size-resolved sensor performance evaluation, and air quality in the Rio Grande Valley (Texas)
- Collaborators Gabi Rodriguez (Solar One), Tedy Mutisya (Kenyatta University) and Godwin Opinde…
Undergraduate researcher in the group, Polina Goldberg, was named the Columbia College class of 2026 salutatorian! Congratulations Polina. She will be continuing her research on the impact of congestion pricing on NYC air quality with the group over the summer and as a master's student at Columbia. Read more here:
This spring, as part of Sai's PhD thesis and funding from Columbia World Projects, the group is establishing an air quality monitoring network in New York City, including under-monitored areas in Queens, Brooklyn, and Manhattan. Several of the monitoring sites are also New York City Public Schools, where students are able to engage in the research through in-class demonstrations and presentations. Field photos below!
Westervelt was interviewed for this story by the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/20/nyregion/nyc-air-quality.html?unlocked_article_code=1.rFA.ElAW.3USazzhhI_pp&smid=url-share
This week, the group was represented at meetings in the United Kingdom including the Regional Aerosol Model Intercomparison Project (RAMIP) workshop, where Prof. Westervelt presented in person and PhD student Joe Amooli presented virtually. Westervelt also gave a seminar at NCAS + University of Reading, hosted by Prof. Laura Wilcox, titled "Multi-scale Approaches to Understanding Aerosol-driven Air Pollution and Climate Change: From Sensors to Supercomputers".
This week, Westervelt group members Prof. Dan and Dr. Abhishek are in Ghana for field work with their colleagues at the Ghana Environmental Protection Authority and the Kintampo Health Research Centre. They are hosting workshops, sponsored by Clean Air Fund, titled "Workshop on Satellite Data and Air Quality Innovation". The workshops will explore the GRASP dataset, air quality policy evaluation, health impact analysis, and air quality data analysis. Pictures below.
This week, the Westervelt group spent two days at the Solar One Environmental Education Center, collaborating on an air sensor research project. As part of the project, New York City area high school teachers and students are getting involved in air quality research, and we kicked off these efforts with a 2-day training on air quality including a custom-built "make your own air sensor" session in which teachers worked with materials provided by our team to assemble and connect to the internet their own air sensors. These sensors will be placed in area schools where existing air monitoring is scarce,…
Happy to announce a new project funded here at Columbia titled "Clean Air Monitoring Interventions for Empowering Communities in Severely Under-Monitored Sections of Queens County, New York". We will be working with community groups, schools, nonprofits, and others in The World's Borough to drive equitable, actionable air pollution solutions using ground-based monitoring, satellite retrievals, and machine learning. More details below!
https://worldprojects.columbia.edu/clean-air-monitoring-interventions-empowering-communities-severely-under-monitored-sections-queens
Summer 2025 is winding down and it has been busy!
- We said "goodbye" to Dr. Garima Raheja, who graduated in May with her PhD. She now works as a climate data scientist at Google, based in NYC. See you around, Dr. Raheja!
- We welcomed two new summer interns via the LDEO intern program. Polina Goldberg, a Columbia computer science major, worked on air sensor measurements at Lamont and in New York. Elsevar Zeynalov, a Columbia data science major, worked on NOx and BC air quality data in Nairobi, Kenya.
- Abhishek and Dan represented the group at the CAMS-Net + SPARTAN meeting in St. Louis. More information…
Dr. Garima Raheja successfully defended her PhD dissertation titled "Measuring Everything, Everywhere, All At Once: Developing Low-Cost Sensors, Tools and Algorithms for Measuring Pollution". Congratulations to Garima! Garima is the first PhD student of the Westervelt Aerosol Group! Thank you for your hard work over the years.
Prof Westervelt and Garima Raheja were honored with Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 2024-2025 awards. Raheja received the 2024 Devon T Wade mentorship, service, and advocacy award, for her outstanding efforts in these areas. More details on Garima's award are available here: https://www.gsas.columbia.edu/news/2024-devon-t-wade-mentorship-service-and-advocacy-award-winner-garima-raheja
Prof. Westervelt received the 2025 Faculty Mentoring award, in recognition of his mentorship of GSAS PhD students. More info here: https://www.gsas.columbia.edu/content/gsas-alumni-awards
Congratulations…
Salomé Dormoy, a master's student in the climate school working with the Westervelt group as a research intern, presented her project today at the Climate School's annual research showcase. Her work this year is titled " Quantification of Disproportionate Burdens of Ambient PM2.5 exposure due to historial redlining in New York City." Salomé was co-advised by senior PhD student Garima Raheja.
Congrats Salomé!
Congratulations to Joe Adabouk Amooli who passed his PhD qualifying exam this Wednesday! His paper is titled "An uncertain future for the climate and health impacts of anthropogenic aerosols in Africa" is also in review in ACP: https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2025-948/
Joe faced some tough questions from the committee but handled it very well! Great work!
Garima Raheja, 5th year PhD in the group, was honored recently with the 2025 Inflection Award. The award honors the 30 top climate researchers in the world. What a tremendous honor! Congratulations, Garima. More here: https://inflectionaward.com/
Prof. Westervelt had the pleasure of speaking to both the New York Times, Wired magazine, and AGU's Eos recently to discuss the discontinuation of the US embassy air quality measurement dataset. Read more here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/04/climate/state-department-air-monitoring-embassies.html
https://www.wired.com/story/air-monitoring-beijing-state-department-halted/
https://eos.org/research-and-developments/404-air-quality-data-from-u-s-embassies-removed
This week prof. Westervelt is in Nairobi for NBO-CHEM, a new field campaign to measure aerosol composition in Nairobi. See more here https://aerosol.ldeo.columbia.edu/content/nbo-chem
We had a huge successful showing at AGU 2024 in Washington DC this year! Everyone had a talk or a poster (in some cases several posters!) and had a lot of visitors at their talks and posters. We forgot to take a photo at group dinner, but some photos are below. A list of presentations from group members can be found here.
Prof. Westervelt travled to Accra, Ghana this week for two purposes: 1) checking in on field work with EPA Ghana and visiting the Afri-SET site and 2) participating in the KNUST West Africa Air Quality program. Thanks to the hosts and organizers for facilitating the trip! Some photos below.
We are welcoming several new group members to the Westervelt aerosol group:
1. Dr. Abhishek Anand joins as a postdoctoral research scientist. He completed his PhD in August with Prof. Albert Presto from Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Anand will work on the new Clean Air Fund project on satellite-derived estimates of PM2.5 in Africa. His website is here.
2. Gopikrishan Gopalakrishna joins us as a Fulbright fellow from IIT-Kharagpur, India. He is a 3rd year PhD student. He is working on ozone pollution globally and in India using GEOS-Chem. More information here.
3. Three…
LDEO Open House was held on October 19, 2024. Several thousand community members visited Lamont to experience great hands on science, attend public lectures, and explore the beautiful campus. Our group was out in force for this event! We had two tables in the Oceanography Tent on air quality monitoring, and Prof. Westervelt gave a public lecture, which can be viewed on recording here. Photos from the event below!
Several group members, including Garima Raheja, Dan Westervelt, and Trevor Durning, were in Bengaluru, India, this week for the India Clean Air Summit 2024, which this year included a side meeting of CAMS-Net, the Clean Air Monitoring and Solutions Network, an NSF project led out of the Westervelt group at LDEO/CU.
Details including presentations, agendas, and photos can be found on the event website, here: https://cstep.in/event-details.php?id=2775
Thanks to CSTEP for being a great host!