We are having a very busy summer!
We welcomed two undergraduate research interns as part of the LDEO REU program. Andrea Belvis-Aquino, from University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez, is working on use of optical particle counters to diagnose dust transport events in the Caribbean, with an emphasis on air quality impacts in Puerto Rico. Sophia Roberts, from Barnard College, joins the group to work on air quality exposure racial and social disparities in New York City.
We also had an exciting opportunity to visit and install a multipollutant air monitor on the LDEO Research Vessel Marcus G…
Mr. Tedy Mwendwa Mutisya joins us for 1.5 months for a short research stay from his home university at Kenyatta University. Together with Dr. Godwin Opinde, who visited in May 2024, he is a key collaborator for our work in Kenya. During Tedy's stay he will be working on developing new air sensors in the lab and instrumenting our new rooftop monitoring site at LDEO.
The Westervelt group has a major presence at Air Sensors International Conference 2024 meeting in Riverside, CA.
Our PI was a plenary keynote speaker on Thursday, on the topic "Key Research Challenges for Realizing the Benefit of Sensors". In this talk, he laid out a vision for emerging research use cases for sensors: satellite data fusion, source apportionment, and streamlined correction models. He also gave a tutorial presentation on day 1and two other presentations during the week.
Also attending was 4th year PhD student Garima Raheja, who presented her work on globally applicable…
This week and next, Prof. Westervelt, Dr. Yanda Zhang, and PhD student Joe Amooli are in Oslo, Norway for the Heterogenous Climate Forcing (HETCLIF) project! Dr. Zhang is having an extended stay at the Center for Advanced Study in Oslo where he's working on regional aerosol emissions impacts on the Arctic. Both Dr. Zhang and Joe are also participating in the HETCLIF early career workshop, which has included PhD students and postdocs from University of Reading (UK), University of California Riverside, University of Texas, and CICERO (Climate Research Center Norway). Some highlights include a hackathon…
Prof. Westervelt was recently appointed as an affiliate professor at Université Mohammed VI Polytechnic (UM6P) in Benguerir, Morocco. His group is affiliated with the African Research Center on Air Quality and Climate, led by his colleague Professor Wahid Mellouki. UM6P is a flagship research university on the African continent. Our group will contribute work on air sensors and chemical transport modeling. Student positions may be available both through UM6P or Columbia. Please contact Prof. Westervelt for more info.
Prof. Westervelt is in Baltimore for a few days for the annual AMS meeting. He will deliver two presentations:
He is also co-chairing a session on wildfire air quality, and air sensors for environmental justice.
For the month of November, Prof. Westervelt will be a visiting research fellow at the Norwegian Academy of Sciences' Center for Advanced Study as part of the Heterogeneous Climate Forcing (HETCLIF) project. He is hosted by Drs. Marianne Lund and Bjørn Samset, of CICERO. The goal of the visit will be to forge collaborations on regional aerosol climate forcing and bring new opportunities for group members to conduct research in collaboration with HETCLIF team members.
Details can be found here: https://cas-nor.no/project/heterogeneous-climate-forcing-hetclif
The whole group visited the NYSDEC Air Monitoring site in Queens, NYC. We were hosted by Santosh Mahat and Eric, site engineers for air quality. We have been working with this site since 2019, and returned to co-locate some additional air quality sensors. We also got a tour of their great equipment at both the NCore site and the Near Roadway site!
Following the recent wildfire smoke event in New York City, which brought unprecedented levels of air pollution to the NYC area, several group members were featured on local and national news. Links and photos below!
Garima Raheja featured on local WABC news and City Limits:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucivtO4qNtU
https://citylimits.org/2023/06/08/amid-air-quality-crisis-officials-urge-people-indoors-what-about-street-homeless-new-yorkers/
Dan Westervelt was on CNN, NY Times, and several other outlets.
https://x.com/columbiaclimate/status/1666804836992704514?s=20…
Group leader Prof. Dan Westervelt was promoted to Lamont Associate Research Professor, effective July 1, 2023. Congratulations Dan!
In recent weeks, PhD students Garima Raheja and Benjamin Yang both passed important milestones in their PhD careers!
Ben passed his qualifying exam in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University.
Garima successfully presented her dissertation proposal in March.
Congratulations, Garima and Ben!
The whole group made the long journey to Kigali, RW, from March 7-10, for the CAMS-Net + AfriqAir annual meeting. The Westervelt group was one of the meeting organizers and are the home to the NSF-funded CAMS-Net project. Several great presentations, posters, panel discussions, and tutorials from all group members. Plus it was the first time some of our group members had met our African collaborators in person. Photos from the event are here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/143275917@N03/albums/72177720306742264
Former group postdoctoral research scientist Dr. Zhonghua Zheng (now at Manchester UK) published a paper recently on the use of auto machine learning (AutoML) for atmospheric chemistry research using publicly available satellite data. This paper was featured as an EOS Editor's highlight: "Unleashing the Power of AutoML for Atmospheric Research". Link below:
https://eos.org/editor-highlights/unleashing-the-power-of-automl-for-atmospheric-research
Last week, Dr. Westervelt visited Prof. Héctor Jimenez of the Department of Physics at University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez (UPRM). We are kicking off a new collaborative project using well-calibrated PM10 instruments from QuantAQ to understand the impact of tropical meteorology and topography on the evolution of the Saharan Air Layer. Students from UPRM will lead the analysis and will also visit LDEO. Some photos below!
A new collaboration between the University of Kinshasa Department of Physics, Department of Public Health, FlushWASH NGO, and the Westervelt group kicked off in Kinshasa, DRC. Pictured below is the installation of a MODULAIR (QuantAQ) which measures PM1, PM2.5, PM10, NOx, CO, O3, and CO2. The team is working on publications with the data and proposals for new equipment.
Recently, Dr. Westervelt attending a planning workshop in Kigali, RW on design of an intensive field campaign for East African megacities. The event was hosted at CMU-Africa. Westervelt is a project leader for this ambitious fieldwork effort and also presented some of his air sensor research in Africa.
Following the workshop, Westervelt and a team of 6 students from the University of Nairobi traveled to Mombasa, Kenya to install the city's first ever PM2.5 reference monitor -- a TEOM 1400. This is a collaboration between the Westervelt group, AfriqAir, and the University of Nairobi…
The team has been busy this fall semester conducting research, teaching, and field work. We are proud to announce 3 group members being recently honored for their work.
1. Visiting PhD Student Victoria Owusu Tawiah was awarded Best Poster at the International Conference for Air Quality in Africa for her poster titled "Relationship between meteorological parameters and PM2.5 in Accra"!
2. Columbia DEES PhD student Garima Raheja was awarded The Story Exchange Women in Science Incentive Prize for her excellent work on air pollution analysis with low cost sensors!
…The group is here in Raleigh, NC with a number of scientific contributions to the American Association for Aerosol Research 2022 annual conference this week!
First up is PhD student Garima Raheja, presenting on low cost sensor intercomparison, evaluation, and long term deployment in two major West African cities (Accra and Lomé). Tuesday, 4:15pm in Room 302A
On Thursday in the poster session be sure to check out PhD student Ben Yang's poster on implementation of an isoprene reduced chemical mechanism in GEOS-Chem! 1 pm Poster Session Thursday
Also a little later on Thursday, Prof. Dan…
A major group field work trip has just concluded in Ghana and Togo. On the agenda was training and teaching, installation of reference monitors and low cost sensors, and meetings with local stakeholders.
Mr. Emmanuel Appoh kindly hosted Prof. Westervelt at the EPA Ghana for 1 week, where Prof. Westervelt gave a weeklong certificate program on air quality data analysis, air quality modeling, and hands on experience in estimating the performance of and developing correction factors for low cost air sensors.
In Togo, Prof. Sabi Kokou hosted Prof. Westervelt and PhD student Garima…
Prof. Westervelt and PhD student Benjamin Yang attended the International GEOS-Chem meeting at Washington University in St. Louis. Westervelt and Yang presented "Evaluation of GEOS-Chem Africa nested grid simulations using an emerging surface air quality dataset". It was good to catch up with the GEOS-Chem community!
The Westervelt group was well-represented at the 2022 Air Sensors International Conference in Pasadena, CA. Prof Westervelt presented on low cost sensor measurements in Mombasa, Kenya, and also hosted 3 sessions on international low cost sensor use as part of the CAMS-Net symposium.
PhD student Garima Raheja presented her work on low cost sensor intercomparison in Ghana and sensor deployments in Ghana and Togo.
The 2022 program can be found here: https://asic.aqrc.ucdavis.edu/2022-program-topics
Garima was recently awarded a Graduate Student Research Fellowship by the National Science Foundation, which will support her research for the next few years. Raheja's proposal is titled "Developing a Universal Machine Learning Calibration Model for Low-Cost Air Sensors". She will continue working towards improving data access via low cost sensors with an eye towards improving data quality in 1) underserved and undermonitored areas of the USA and 2) major cities in the Global South. The NSF GRFP receives about 12,000 applicants each year and awards around 2,000. Congratulations to Garima on…
Dr. Richard Spinrad, Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, visited Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory on Friday March 25. He delivered remarks at a town hall and took questions from the Lamont community. Prior to his remarks, Lamont scientists presented a series of lightning talks including Prof Westervelt who spoke on air pollution and climate research in sub-Saharan Africa. Photos below, credit Francesco Fiondella.
A new Westervelt group paper led by PhD student Garima Raheja was published recently in ACS Earth and Space Chemistry. Raheja analyzed ~2 years of calibrated low cost sensor in Lomé, Togo. To our knowledge this is the first ambient air quality profile in Togo. Co-authors included scientists and students from the Université de Lomé and a non-profit in Ghana.
Link to paper:
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsearthspacechem.1c00391