I work on many different aspects of air pollution. I love working on air quality issues where I live, so I have a project focused on understanding how recent oil and gas development is impacting air quality in the Front Range and the connection between fires and air quality in the western U.S. On a global scale, I am also interested in understanding how the atmosphere cleans itself and how nitrogen moves through the atmosphere. I use a variety of tools to explore these topics including field-based measurements, models of the atmosphere and satellite data.

I was the second grader who called the local TV meteorologist to ask, “what makes wind?” I was the high school kid who led rallies to stop smoking in the school bathrooms. Now I work on air quality – it’s the perfect mix of atmospheric science and chemistry. When I was in high school, I didn’t know that Atmospheric Science (a.k.a Meteorology) was a possible major – my guidance counselor was useless – so I ended up at Colby College in Waterville, ME double majoring in chemistry and physics. My neighbor’s mom had gone to Colby – that was my connection. That only lasted a year. I found an Atmospheric Science program at the University of British Columbia, and headed west in my Escort Wagon without looking back. As an undergraduate, I skipped a semester and spent 6 months working at the Mount Washington Observatory all while secretly sleeping in the Colby College dorms on my weeks off. After finishing my undergraduate degree, I could not find a job. So I painted houses for a bit. Again, that didn’t last long. I found my way into a Master’s program at the University of New Hampshire where I used the data that I had helped to collect as an undergraduate intern in my thesis. My next step was a Staff Scientist position at the Mount Washington Observatory. During this time, I actually ended up doing field-work on an island rather than a mountain, but that is another story. Anyway, I figured out that I loved science, I seemed to be good at science, and I wanted to be in charge of what science I was doing. So I decided to get a PhD, and headed west again to the University of Washington. I got lucky and my PhD project was awesome – this time involving a mountain. Then it was onto a postdoc at Harvard, and voila now I am a faculty member at CSU.