ACS conference

2019 ACS Conference

Andy, Nicole and Nancy went to 2019 ACS conference this summer in San Diago.
It was such a big conference, Andy, Nicole and Nancy all presented great research and met many awesome researchers there!


Andy took Nicole and Nancy to experience great seafood!


Nancy presented her current research project "Polymer Thin Film as a Sensor of Aerosol Acidity"


Nicole present poster at Science-Mix section



Nicole was giving two talks: "Harmful algal bloom toxins in atmospheric aerosol", and "IEPOX uptake changes aerosol morphology and viscosity"



Nancy and Nicole at ACS conference

2019 Summer Symposiums

2019 Summer Symposiums

This summer ault's lab has some great presentations! Michigan Sea Grant's internship program hosted a symposium and invited Nicole to give a talk, which is very exciting. She talked about her current study "Harmful Algal Bloom Toxins in Atmospheric Aerosols". Nicole did a great job on her talk and this study will be published soon!

Nicole's talk

At the same day, the University of Michigan chemistry department hosted Karle's Symposium. It's the first time Jia presented his research.

Jia with his poster

Upcoming Harmful Algal Bloom Study

Ault Lab graduate students Nicole Olson and Jia Shi and Prof. Ault traveled to Grand Lake St. Mary's to visit the site for our upcoming harmful algal bloom study. We performed preliminary measurements to analyze the freshwater for blue green algae content and pH. We will spend a week in early August at Wright State University collecting freshwater and aerosol particles to determine if harmful algal bloom toxins are aerosolized on this lake. Stay tuned for some very exciting results next month!

Graduate students Nicole Olson and Jia Shi scouting sampling locations. 

Jia and Nicole performing preliminary measurements. 

Prof. Ault, Nicole, and Jia smiling after a successful day. Looking forward to sampling in August!

IEPOXALYPSE Round 2 Field Study

This summer, Ault's lab and Surratt's lab had another summer field study at the University of North Carolina, Chaple Hill. This field study is very successful and productive, many interesting stories about the IEPOXALYPSE are coming!

Most highlight of this field study is having hard work and a fantastic crew of students & postdocs, who have put lots of effort into this field study. Lead students were Ziying (Nancy) Lei from our group & Yuzhi Chen from UNC, along with Madeline from UM and postdoc Yue Zhang from UNC.


May 28th, Nancy and Madeline with help from Nicole, Jia, Yao, Kim loaded ATOFMS, impactors, etc. With Professor Ault, we started our road trip!

We stopped at Cincinnati on the way and had a great time with Helene Ault and Bruce Ault, they made an amazing dinner! 

We had a kickoff dinner at the beginning of the campaign. We were so excited to work with Jason's UNC team, Yuzhi & Yue!

We were appreciative of some help from Jamy in the PrattLab at Michigan helping Madeline get the ATOFMS optimized in the field.

After a series of experiments, we had a great mid-study meeting to assess our data so far and plan out our experiments for the second half of the study led by Nancy Lei and Yuzhi Chen.

We were also joined by Ault Lab postdoc and summer undergrad Isabel Ledsky from Chemistry Department at Carleton College

After a final few experiments that ran deep into the night, we packed up our instruments and headed back to Michigan. Excited to be back and with tons of good data to analyze! Way to go team IEPOXALYPSE!

Nicole's First 1st Author Paper

Nicole just published her first 1st author paper as part of our collaboration with Prof. Jason Surratt and his group. 

"Reactive Uptake of Isoprene Epoxydiols Increases the Viscosity of the Core of Phase-Separated Aerosol Particles" This paper shows something really unique and interesting! We observed the core of a phase-separated marble transform from water-like to marble-like in less than a minute. 

Congratulations to Nicole and all co-authors! Great job!




You can check it out by click this link:
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsearthspacechem.9b00138?fbclid=IwAR2G6q01-2akcUopOdD46Seybi1DAl4IkoTHD12RrEGEvI4FcoNehjwU3Yo#.XQ2ufxAyADM.facebook

Nicole's Image Featured at Michigan Center for Materials Characterization!

Nicole submitted one of her electron microscopy images to an imaging competition held by the Michigan Center for Materials Characterization, the electron microscopy user facility on campus. The image shows secondary organic aerosol (SOA) created in the Surratt Lab at UNC during our summer 2018 field study. The image was chosen as one to be displayed in the Michigan Center for Materials Characterization lobby! Stay tuned for more exciting images from the upcoming summer 2019 field study!

Images chosen for display in the Michigan Center for Materials Characterization lobby.

The image Nicole submitted to the competition. This image, collected using scanning electron microscopy, shows a-pinene SOA created in the Surratt Lab during the summer 2018 IEPOXalypse study. 

 

Nancy Becomes a PhD Candidate!

Nancy successfully passed her preliminary exam after she joined Ault's lab for a year! Her study is focusing on single particle physical and chemical characterization of atmospheric aerosol. In the past year, she used Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), AFM-IR, and Raman micro-spectroscopy to study laboratory-generated aerosol particles and ambient particles. Congrats!