It’s been a busy summer in the Finlayson-Pitts group! Here are a few highlights:

From June 26th to July 25th , we welcomed a group of two high school students from the ALMA Science Academy along with two undergraduate student mentors.  Together they learn about the particulate matter Purple Air monitors, collect air quality data from selected monitors located in Santa Ana, studied PM concentration and trends over a month period and, presented their data to our July DOJ team meeting.

On Aug. 08th, Patricia participated in the SoCal Undergraduate Chemistry Research Symposium hosted by UCI.  She presented her work on the formation of sub-10 nm particles from the reaction of methanesulfonic acid and 4-aminobutanol, and she was awarded the Best Poster Award for her presentation – Congratulations Patricia!

For the second year consecutive, Ellie joined us for summer research.  For her new project, she ran the Smith group’s Chemical Ionization Mass Spectrometer (CIMS) where she compared measurements of HOMs to those measured with Matrix Assisted Ionization in Vacuum (MAIV), also dubbed as “Magic ionization” by the Trimpin group at Wayne State University.