Most Recent Group Photo

Taken September 21, 2025
Front row (left to right): Ran, Antonio, Harshita, Rowshon, Wayne.
Back row (left to right): Rio, Shakiba, Seoin, Roshan. Not pictured: Nana.

Principal Investigator:

Ran Zhao (Associate Professor of Environmental and Atmospheric Chemistry)

BSc, PhD – University of Toronto
Postdoc – California Institute of Technology
Assistant professor 2018~2024
Associate professor 2024~

Ran is an enthusiastic Atmospheric Chemist performing active research to understand the role of chemistry in the air that we breathe. He obtained his PhD degree at the University of Toronto in Dr. Jonathan Abbatt’s lab. Ran worked as an NSERC postdoc fellow at California Institute of Technology (Supervisors: Dr. John Seinfeld and Dr. Paul Wennberg) before joining the University of Alberta in 2018.  Check out his personal publication list at ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ran_Zhao2 

Graduate Students:

Mst Rowshon Afroz

Rowshon completed her BSc and MSc in Applied Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Her graduate research was on the study of heavy metal contamination in soil, sediment, fish, groundwater, surface water, and vegetables in Ishurdi, Pabna. After completing her graduation, she worked in the Quality Assurance department of a pharmaceutical company. She joined the Zhao group in September 2021 as a graduate student and is conducting research on the application of low-cost air quality sensors for monitoring indoor air quality (IAQ) in various indoor environments.

Shakiba Talebian 

Shakiba completed her B.Sc. in Chemistry at the Sharif University of Technology in Iran. Her undergraduate project was focused on Analytical Chemistry and Chemometrics. Shakiba worked on detecting adulterations in turmeric by using chemometrics methods. After finishing her undergraduate studies, she realized her interest in Analytical and Environmental Chemistry and decided to continue her graduate studies in these fields. Shakiba joined the Zhao Group as a graduate student in 2022. She is working on understanding the photochemical reactions that happen when chemicals are emitted from biomass burning in the atmosphere.

Anastasiia Kim

Nana is a graduate student working on atmospheric aerosols. Her research includes using a PAM (Potential Aerosol Mass) reactor to study the oxidative aging of biomass burning emissions, as well as investigating the formation and properties of tarballs, a type of carbonaceous particle produced during biomass combustion.

Wayne Cheng

Wayne worked in the Zhao group from 2019 to 2020 as a CHEM399 student. He improved an SPE method for herbicide (2,4-D) in stormwater ponds. He rejoined the group in 2021 as a part-time technician, in charge of the assembly of low-cost air quality sensors. Starting in September 2024, Wayne became an MSc student in the group, aiming to apply his previous experience in chemometrics to lead projects related to aerosomics.


Rio Bouwers

Rio completed his BSc in Chemistry with a minor in Mathematics at The King’s University in Edmonton. His undergraduate research focused on utilizing a variety of techniques and spectroscopic methods to quantify and characterize the aqueous interactions between metals and naphthenic acids at environmentally relevant conditions. After graduating, Rio continued his work on this project via an internship with Environment and Climate Change Canada. This experience helped Rio to realize his interest in academic research and in the field of analytical environmental chemistry. Rio joined the Zhao research group as a graduate student in 2024, and his current research will focus on combining experimental and model-based approaches to study the partitioning of volatile organic contaminants within industrial chicken farms.

Roshan Kumar Singh

Roshan completed his B.Tech. in Civil Engineering from Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam Technical University in 2020, focusing on the use of recycled aggregates in his undergraduate project. He completed his M.Tech. in Environmental Engineering at NIT Allahabad, India, in 2022. His research included a year-long physico-chemical analysis of domestic wastewater at two sewage treatment plants, utilizing both ASP and MBBR technologies. In July 2022, he began his PhD in Environmental Engineering at IIT Kanpur, under the guidance of Prof. Tarun Gupta. Now a joint PhD student at the University of Alberta with Prof. Ran Zhao, Roshan studies the emission characteristics of various biomass burning sources in rural India.

Harshita Arora

Harshita hails from Delhi, India, where she earned both her B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Chemistry from the University of Delhi in 2015 and 2017, respectively. She joined the Zhao Group at the University of Alberta as a Master’s student in May 2025. Her research background lies in biophysical chemistry, and during her current graduate studies, she is leveraging this expertise to explore the health effects of air pollutants. Specifically, her work focuses on conducting chemical assays and qPCR analyses to assess the impacts of biomass burning emissions from biofuels in India and wildfire-affected PM2.5 in Canada. Outside the lab, Harshita enjoys singing and spending quality time with her children.

Seoin Wang

Seoin completed her BSc in Chemistry with a minor in Earth and Atmospheric Science at the University of Alberta. During her undergraduate studies, she conducted research in Dr. James Harynuk’s group, where she analyzed the chemical constituents of third-hand exposure of cannabis and tobacco smoke on cotton fabrics using two-dimensional gas chromatography coupled with time-of-flight mass spectrometry. She joined the Zhao group in 2025, where she now focuses on environmental analytical chemistry. Her current research focuses on applying derivatization techniques with GC-MS to detect levoglucosan and other sugars in biomass burning.

Undergraduate Students and Research Associates:

Antonio Mirante

Antonio’s previous research project (CHEM 299) under the McDermott group entailed testing on-the-line hand-held surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy, and its effectiveness in pharmaceutical detection within treated wastewater. With an interest in the environment, wildfires, and analytical chemistry, he began working as a full-time technician in the Zhao group in May 2025 through the University of Alberta’s Science Internship Program. Antonio will graduate in Winter 2027 with a BSc specialization in chemistry.

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Alumni

Ph.D. Graduate

Vikram Choudhary – Postdoc at UBC
Tania Gautam – Postdoc at Pacific Northwest National Lab (PNNL)
Xinyang (Timothy) Guo – Postdoc at U of A with Dr. Xingfang Li
Shuang Wu – Air Quality Scientist at Alberta Energy Regulator (AER)
Max Loebel Roson – Postdoc at the Government of France

MSc Graduate

Amanda Hanashiro Moraes
Jessica Lima Amorim – Clean Harbors

Undergraduate students

James Davis – PharmD, U of A
Kim Wong – Scientist at Nova Medical Testing
Dylan Long
Jarred Alonzo
Erica Kim – Graduate Student, UBC
Sohaib Omar
Sophie Shi – Graduate Student, U of A
Meng Wang – Pharmacy, U of A
Jeff Ma
Keifer Klimchuk – graduate school, U of A
Christian Fotang – Later became the President of the U of A Student Union
Ryan Duruisseau-Kuntz – Graduate student, U of Toronto
Carter Kuiper – Graduate Student, U of A
Chester Lau – Graduate Student, Le group, U of A
Steven Chen
Rhea Fang – Graduate Student, UK
Siti Hayati
Ariel Delorme
Toluwatise Ehindero – University of Calgary
Jenny Chau Khac – Xingfang Li group, U of A
Angela Chan – Nova Medical Testing