Professor Dabdub Wins EPA Grant

Donald DabdubApril 7, 2016 - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency awarded $701,304 to two UC Irvine researchers who are helping answer the question of how to protect the air we breathe from the impacts of climate change. 

Donald Dabdub, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, and chemistry professor Sergey Nizkorodov are leading the study on the effects of ammonia and rising global temperatures on secondary organic aerosol formation. 

“California has some of the worst air quality in the nation, and the changing climate could exacerbate the problem,” said Jared Blumenfeld, EPA’s regional administrator for the Pacific Southwest. “UC Irvine’s research is an important step toward protecting the climate and achieving the state’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions substantially by 2050.”

"This grant offers an exciting opportunity to learn about air pollution in the future from both state-of-the-art experiments and computer-modeling techniques," said Dabdub. "We know that both ammonia and organic compounds will be emitted more strongly in the future, and this can bring about new chemical reactions, which increase the burden of particulate matter. We will be able to better quantify the effect of this previously unexplored chemistry at the end of this project."

UCI was one of 12 universities nationwide (including UC Davis) to receive an air quality research grant, funded by the agency’s Science to Achieve Results (STAR) program.