Student Chapter Highlights

Thanks to those who sent highlights from their student chapters. To be included in future issues, please e-mail your highlights using the subject line “AAAR Student Chapter Highlight” to the incoming editor, Kerry Kelly at kerry.kelly@utah.edu.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: UIUC AAARSC

President: Haoran Yu

The UIUC AAAR student chapter was established on May 21, 2021 under the supervision of Dr. Nicole Riemer and Dr. Vishal Verma. As a newly formed chapter in the Midwest U.S., we aim to advance the profession of aerosol study at UIUC, and to promote networking with our aerosol research colleagues in other Midwest U.S. states. On August 5, 2021, we had our first AAAR event of the UIUC Chapter entitled Air Connect 3MT. Later this semester we will host the Low Pressure back-to-school scavenger hunt for UIUC students, with the purpose of improving the vitality and familiarity with new students. We plan to collaborate with our friend student chapters in the upcoming Fall semester.

Find the UIUC AAAR Student Chapter online and on Facebook.

University of California, Irvine: UCI AAARSC

President: Deanna Myers

The AAAR Student Chapter at UCI has had a busy year despite the setbacks of COVID. We have continued meeting regularly for events aimed at graduate students, post-docs, and project scientists in environmental sciences. Last summer we hosted tutorials on atmospheric nanoparticles, brown carbon, and kinetic multiphase modeling for graduate students led by Professors Jim Smith, Sergey Nizkorodov, and Manabu Shiraiwa, respectively. We also had wonderful talks from Professors Rachel O’Brien from William & Mary and Tara Kahan from the University of Saskatchewan about their research and experiences as newer research faculty.

To maintain connections between the graduate students while stuck at home, we hosted several well-attended Zoom game nights and a (very competitive!) Halloween costume contest. More recently, our chapter held a “Women in Environmental Sciences” panel with Professors AnnMarie Carlton, Celia Faiola, and Barbara Finlayson-Pitts. We are so grateful these excellent scientists and mentors shared insight into their experiences coming up in the field. In the fall we look forward to hosting informal research talks where grad students, post-docs, and project scientists can share the day-to-day of their research and how they make measurements, in plain terms.

Find the UCI AAAR Student Chapter online and on Twitter.