Current Members
— Undergraduate students
Patricia Morris
Patricia is a third year Chemistry undergraduate student at UCI with a minor in Earth & Atmospheric Sciences. In the lab, she is currently investigating new particle formation and growth from the reaction of methanesulfonic acid with multifunctional amines using our custom-build 1-m borrosilicate flow reactor.
Elizabeth (Ellie) Wingen
Ellie is a third year undergraduate majoring in Biochemistry at UC Riverside and has developed a strong interest in organic chemistry research. Here she is running the Smith group’s Chemical Ionization Mass Spectrometer (CIMS) where she is comparing 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.
Katelyn Kiyoko Pacaud
Katelyn is a third-year Chemistry undergraduate at UCI specializing in Environmental Chemistry. In the lab, Katelyn is studying gas-particle interactions in the atmosphere using self-assembled monolayers on silica nanoparticles as a model for organic particles.
Cheyenne Begay
Cheyenne is in her third year majoring in Chemistry at UCI. She has been active in the Chemistry department as an undergrad learning assistant along with being a Science Olympiad test writer. In the lab, she analyzes the surface composition of organic particles using different mass spectrometry ionization techniques, such as Direct Analysis in Real Time (DART) and Matrix Assisted Ionization in Vacuum (MAIV).
Maryam Parvinian
Maryam is a third-year undergraduate Chemistry student at UCI specializing in Synthetic Chemistry. She has developed an interest in Organic and Environmental Chemistry research throughout the years. In the lab, she is currently studying the photolysis of neonicotinoids in the atmosphere and the oxidation of these atmospheric contaminants on solid substrates using attenuated total reflectance Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR).
— Post-doctoral scholars
Kristen Johnson, PhD
Kristen earned her B.S. in Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Superior in 2016 and her PhD in physical chemistry at Washington State University in 2022. Her previous research focused on understanding chemical reactions of molecules adsorbed on surfaces using scanning tunneling microscopy. She enjoys investigating the exciting world of interfacial chemistry and in the Finlayson-Pitts lab she will be investigating the growth of organic aerosols via a “burying mechanism” through the use of model self-assembled monolayers modified surfaces.
— Project Scientists
Mike J. Ezell
Mike received his M.A. degree in 1970 from California State University at Fullerton. From about 1980 until the present, he has worked in the Finlayson-Pitts labs on multiple projects and presently on reactive uptake of gas-phase amines on solid dicarboxylic acids.
Lisa M. Wingen, PhD
Lisa earned her B. S. in chemistry at California State University, Fullerton and her M.S. and Ph.D. in physical chemistry at UC Irvine in 1999. Her research projects have included almost everything under the sun — gas-phase chemistry of VOCs, photo-oxidation of sea salt aerosol, heterogeneous hydrolysis of nitrogen dioxide, composition and growth of laboratory-generated secondary organic aerosol, and others. She enjoys being able to take part in a variety of research projects with lots of instrumentation.
Weihong Wang, PhD
Veronique Perraud, PhD
Veronique earned a B.S. in Chemistry (with a minor in Natural Sciences) and a M.S. in Analytical Chemistry. She received her Ph.D. in Environmental Sciences from the University Aix-Marseille I in France in 2007. She has been working on many projects in the Finlayson-Pitts research group since April 2008 (link). She loves solving challenging analytical problems in the lab and blogging about how cool science can be! (Chem blog)
— Project Coordinator
Melissa Sweet
Honorary Members
Alisa Ezell Smith
James N. Pitts Jr.
Martina Roeselova
Past members
Undergraduate students
Simone Andersen (exchange student from Denmark)
Brandon Buehler
Michael Brown
Joey Jo-Yee Cheng
Camille Damore
Chris Elliott
Ellen Fleyshman
Adrian Gomez
Christy J. Keoshian
Bryce Loop
Kjertan Lyster (exchange student from Denmark)
Anton Ni
Geovani Montoya
Eleazar Rodriguez
Kanuri Roundtree (visiting student from D. DeHaan’s group)
Olivia Ryder
Gennady Soskin
Sarah Toal
Brian Weissbart
Cathy Wong
Graduate students
Crisand Anderson
Kristine D. Arquero
Emily Bruns
Bill Cody
Matthew L. Dawson
Christopher Dilbeck
Michelle Fairhurst
Michael Gebel
Chris Harmon
Margaret Kaleuati
Eladio M. Knipping
Matt Lakin
Brian McGovney
Javier Mestas
Samar Moussa
Mark Ragains
Kevin Ramazan
Nicole Richards-Henderson
Armando Rivera-Figueroa
Andrea (Annie) Rohrbacher
Huda Shaka
Rachelle Smalley
Jennie Thomas
Allison Vander Wall
Weihong Wang
Lisa Wingen
Post-doctoral scholars
Kifle Z. Aregahegn
Bill Barney
Peter Beichert
Tracy Caldwell Dyson
Haihan Chen
David DeHaan
Yael Dubowski
Krishna Foster
Brigitte Fox-Beyer
Aline Gratien
Sherri Hunt
Frederico Karagulian
Sambhav Kumbhani
Carla Kidd
Chris Knox
Charles Lai
Sarka Langer
Yixin Li
Michihiro Mochida
Amy Moskun
Ruaidhri Neavyn
Noriko Nishino
Trent Nordmeyer
Kawon Oum
Sean Pemberton
Yiming Qin
Jonathan Raff
William Robertson
Najat Saliba
Mica Smith
Jochen Stutz
Ann Louise Sumner
Dennis Syomin
Katherine Thompson
Mychel Varner (coll. with Prof. Benny Gerber)
Rainer Vogt
Xinke Wang
Jing Xu (coll. with Prof. Benny Gerber)
Husheng Yang
Yong Yu
Yue Zhao
Project Scientists / Visiting researchers
Dr. Jonathan Abbatt (Fullbright Fellow 2018, University of Toronto, Canada)
Dr. Hind al-Abadleh (Fullbright Fellow 2019, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada)
Dr. Patrick Ayotte (Fullbright Fellow 2022, University of Sherbrooke, Canada)
Dr. Styliani Consta (Fullbright Fellow 2023, The University of Western Ontario, Canada)
Dr. Barbara D’Anna (visiting researcher)
Dr. Lambert Doezema (visiting researcher, Loyola Marymount College, Los Angeles)
Dr. Jean-Francois Doussin (visiting researcher)
Dr. Jane Ganske (visiting professor, Pepperdine Univ.)
Stanley Johnson
Dr. Teri Longin (visiting professor, Univ. of Redlands)
Dr. Yan Li (visiting researcher)
Dr. Theresa McIntire
Dr. Thomas Preston (Fullbright 2021, McGill University, Canada)
Dr. Saloua Saidane (visiting researcher)