AAAR at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)
By Oladayo Oladeji (President), Katherine Pierre-Louis (Vice President), Ali Stinchfield (Treasurer), Ziheng Zeng (Secretary) and Christine Troller (Outreach Coordinator)
The AAAR Student Chapter at Carnegie Mellon University had an engaging academic year. Each semester, we host biweekly coffee hours to foster collaboration and discussion among members. In the spring, we organized the annual Donora Lecture, featuring Dr. Pablo Saide from UCLA, in response to member interest. This lecture commemorates the 1948 Donora Smog disaster, which caused 20 fatalities and serious health issues for thousands in Donora, Pennsylvania. Over the summer, we held a flower-planting event to give back to the Pittsburgh community. Members also received T-shirts and stickers to celebrate our chapter’s achievements. Several members presented research at major conferences, including the AAAR Conference 2024, American Geophysical Union (AGU), and the American Meteorological Society (AMS) Annual Meeting. We’re proud of their accomplishments, such as Paa Sey’s Outstanding Student Presentation Award at AGU 2023, Victor Sanchez second place winner of the Oral Student Presentation at AMS 2023, and Oladayo Oladeji’s first place win in the Fine Particle Art Competition at AAAR 2024. We also hosted welcome events each semester to integrate new members. Looking forward, we plan to continue the Donora Lecture tradition, invite prominent researchers, engage in community outreach, and support our members through coffee hours and social events.
AAAR at the University of Maryland (UMD)
By Nahin Ferdousi-Rokib, Esther Olonimoyo, and Martin Ahn
The AAAR Student Chapter at UMD had the pleasure of hosting the AAAR Lecture series this past May. We hosted Dr. Hagen Telg (NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory/CIRES) who discussed uncertainties in aerosol optical properties calculated from size distribution measurements. Several of our members presented their research at conferences including the 2024 AMS Annual Meeting, ACS Spring 2024 Meeting, Molecular Level Understanding of Atmospheric Aerosols Symposium (MUOAA), and AAAR 42nd Annual Conference. We continue to grow our membership and have exciting plans in the coming semester to host coffee hours to continue promoting discussions of aerosol impact on both health and the climate.
AAAR at the University of California, Riverside (UCR)
By Erin Bowey, Chapter President
The AAAR student chapter at UCR has had a busy and successful Autumn quarter. Several of our members attended and presented their work at various symposia and conferences, including UCR’s Department of Environmental Science seminar, the Informal Gathering on Atmospheric Science and Photochemistry (IGASP) at UC San Diego, and of course, the AAAR 42nd annual conference in Albuquerque, NM.
We had the pleasure of hosting several visiting faculty members in the field of aerosols to present talks on their research. These included Dr. Harish Phuleria from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, who presented a special seminar chronicling his studies on urban vehicle traffic, and Dr. Alexei Khalizov from the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) who discussed his work on complex soot particle properties and their atmospheric impacts. Our chapter was also able to have exclusive meetings with each of these guest speakers. We gratefully take these meetings as an opportunity to have a conversation about the topic of their talk in more detail, as well as to seek their insights into broader subjects and career advice in the field of aerosol research.
On Oct. 28th with the approach of Halloween, we had a spooky social event where members gathered for a costume contest and watch party of John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982). Many treats and tricks were enjoyed by all!
For the future of our chapter, we have plans for a Journal Club and a Writing Club to build our abilities in reading and writing quality research papers together. We also look forward to hosting more guest speakers and putting on more seasonal socials through the coming months.
AAAR at Colorado State University (CSU)
By Samuel O’Donnell, Chapter President
The CSU AAAR chapter has primarily focused on assisting with and providing snacks for the department’s weekly atmospheric chemistry meetings. These meetings feature presentations by students, post-docs, and research scientists on aerosol- and chemistry-related topics.
Over the past year, we’ve had talks covering Arctic field campaigns (MOSAIC and ARTofMELT), gas and aerosol measurement techniques, modeling of aerosol and chemical processes, and satellite retrievals. The talks—and the sheer breadth of topics discussed—have been a fantastic way for researchers across campus to broaden their understanding of aerosol and chemical processes in the atmosphere.
Plus, attendance is always better when we provide snacks!
This Issue’s Newsletter Committee:
Editor | Sarah Petters, University of California, Riverside
Senior Assistant Editor | Lindsay Yee, University of California, Berkeley
Junior Assistant Editor | Qian Zhang, UL Research Institute
Junior Assistant Editor | Robert Nishida, University of Waterloo