Dried cow dung is widely burned as solid fuel in developing part of the world. However, the chemicals arising from this type of fuel are extremely poorly understood. In our new contribution lead by Max, we surveyed across a number of key chemical properties of emissions from cow dung burning. These include the light absorption of particles, emission factor of levoglucosan (tracer for biomass burning), an other detailed chemical feature monitored by LC-MS. The major conclusion from our work is that the levoglucosan emission factor from cow dung is much less than that from wood burning. There was also a substantially larger organic nitrogen pool in the cow dung emission than wood burning emissions.

Link to the paper:

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsearthspacechem.1c00268

Jessica successfully defended her MSc thesis on Jan 28, 2021.

Congratulations! You are the first to complete a graduate degree in the Zhao group.

Our Humidifier paper has got some media attention and was highlighted by Global News, and CTV News! We are happy that our research can be directly translated into knowledge of the general public.

Are you using an ultrasonic humidifier at home? If so, you are making lots of lots of particulate matter!

We are happy to share our new paper by Lau et al., published on Indoor Air, the flagship journal in the field of indoor air quality. Congrats to Chester, Max, Tania, and Keifer!

Jessica’s first-author paper is now published online in Environmental Science & Technology, a top journal in the field of environmental chemitry. A big congratulations to Jessica, as well as Shuang, Chester, and Keifer who are listed as coauthors!

 

Had a great group lunch at Pampa Brazilian Stake House!

back row (left to right): Max, Chester, Wayne, Ran, Tania, Shuang
front row (left to right): Jessica, Keifer, Timothy

Our progess so far in exploration of the nearby restaurants:

Tanuki Kyoto Sushi (Japanese, Nov 2018)
Rosso Pizzeria (Italian, Nov 2019)
Pampa Brazilian Steakhouse (Brazilian, Feb 2020)

Congratulations for Jessica, Tania, and Max for each delivering an excellent poster presentation at the American Geophysical Union meeting at San Francisco in Dec. 2019!

Our group has already started making contributions to the larger research community!

Picture: a mini U of A dinner with Sarah Styler’s research group!

Ran is feeling honored for an opportunity to introduce the research done at the Zhao group in front of the Honourable Kirsty Duncan, Ministry of Science and Sports, the Honourable Amarjeet Sohi, Minister of Natural Resources, and the U of A president David Turpin.

They were impressed by and appreciated the hard work everyone had done in the lab. Congratulations to us all!

The first Prairie Environmental Chemistry Colloquium (PECC) was hosted at the U of A on May 13 and 14. PECC is a regional academic conference with a theme on environmental sciences. This year, we welcomed attendees from the U of A, the University of Saskatchewan, MacEwan University, the University of Calgary, and Mount Royal University. We also had the pleasure to invite Dr. Lynn Mazzoleni (Michigan Tech), Dr. Alvaro Osornio-Vargas (U of A), and Dr. Charlene Nielson (U of A) as our plenary speakers.

PECC featured two full days of student presentations. Jessica, Tania, and Max each gave an oral presentation, while Keifer, Jeff, Meng, Chester, and Sophie each presented a poster on their respective research project. Well done everyone!

The Zhao group members also made significant contributions to the organization of PECC. The conference was organized as a joint effort of the Zhao group and the Styler group at U of A.  Jessica, Max, Tania, and Meng were actively involved in the organizational committee. Congratulations for their achievement!

Ran was awarded this year’s Yuxiang Young Scholar Award, an award to recognize outstanding Chinese and Chinese-American young scholars in oceanic and atmospheric sciences and related fields.

The award is issued by Chinese-American Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (COAA).