Wildfire Smoke, Atmospheric Chemistry, and Air Quality

I am a postdoctoral scholar at Rutgers University in Prof. Xiaomeng Jin’s group. I study how wildfire emissions and atmospheric chemistry shape air quality and public-health risks, combining satellite, aircraft, and surface observations with chemical transport models, box models, and data-driven methods.

I earned my Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Montana, where I worked with Prof. Lu Hu and Prof. Robert Yokelson on wildfire VOC emissions and smoke photochemistry. I received my B.S. in Atmospheric Science (Honors) from Lanzhou University and was a visiting student in Prof. Dan Jaffe’s group at the University of Washington.

Research focus

• Wildfire emissions: Constraining VOC and OVOC emissions with WE-CAN, FIREX-AQ, surface observations, and GEOS-Chem.
• Fresh-smoke chemistry: Diagnosing OH-ozone-PAN chemistry, chemical-mechanism gaps, and ozone-production regimes.
• Smoke aging: Distinguishing OH exposure, photochemical age, physical transport time, dilution, and background mixing.
• Ozone sensitivity: Constructing and interpreting VOC-NOx ozone isopleths under controlled chemical and meteorological conditions.
• Satellite integration: Developing satellite-sampled along-plume and cross-plume transects using TROPOMI and TEMPO together with winds, plume height, retrieval sensitivity, and model sampling.
• Plumes to people: Connecting smoke composition and model bias to exposure and public-health metrics beyond PM2.5 mass alone.

My work uses GEOS-Chem for regional-to-global chemical transport modeling and F0AM for detailed box-model and mechanism analysis. The goal is to make wildfire-smoke predictions more chemically realistic, observationally constrained, and useful for health applications.

You can download my current CV, explore my research, browse publications, or view recent talks and posters. My ORCID is 0000-0003-1346-5352. Please contact me if you would like to discuss research or collaboration.