"Extreme air pollution episodes in heavily populated areas: sources, processes, and effects"The aim of this project is to investigate extreme air pollution episodes that occur in some heavily populated cities, especially in China. The focus will be at the newly constructed air quality measurement site at the Beijing University of Chemical Technology (BUCT), constructed in collaboration with BUCT and University of Helsinki. The project will also use data from other locations in Beijing as well as different cities in China and other parts of the world. Scientific questions include how these events form, whether there are any distinct precursors, the chemical and physical processes prior to and during the events, how local meteorology affects the events, and how they eventually dissipate. One point of interest is the accuracy of regional air quality models in simulating the processes before and during extreme pollution events, and thus how accurately the events can be forecasted. This will help to improve understanding of the strengths and shortcomings of different air quality models.Furthermore, this project aims to gain insight into whether there are long-term trends in frequency and/or severity of such events. This will help understand what changes in policy, population, fuel types, climate, and other changes in human behaviour may be influence trends in these events. A useful result may be to determine if policies and other mitigation efforts are able to reduce the severity and lower the frequency of extreme pollution episodes. This includes investigating what short and long-term cleanup efforts may have been implemented in the past in Beijing or other cities that have abated these events. Such study may also include a comparison of different large cities around the globe with different societal and regional conditions to gain understanding of which policies may or may not be effective.

Thesis title: "Development of the MEGAN3 BVOC Emission Model for Use with the SILAM Chemical Transport Model"Under the supervision of Dr. Michael Boy, I worked on a joint project between INAR and the Finnish Meteorological Institute developing and expanding atmospheric chemistry and aerosol modules in the SILAM model. SILAM (System for Integrated Modelling of Atmospheric Composition) is used throughout Europe and the world for forecasting air quality, wildfire smoke, pollen, and emergency response for nuclear incidents and chemical terrorism. My work focused on biogenic emissions from forests in Finland.

Hawaii Renewables LLC is working in partnership with O'oma Homestead Alliance (OHA) to develop a utility-scale solar farm on the Big Island of Hawaii.In 2017 I set up a weather station at Kalaoa, north of Kailua-Kona, for a one-year study that collected solar radiation at the site of the proposed project. The purpose of the instrument is for gathering data as part of a solar farm development, and the results were provided to OHA for project and design planning.I am now providing consulting to OHA about meteorology, climate, seasonal variations in solar radiation, and overall project planning based on solar input.

As a software engineer, I worked on an agile development team for two major products:• IDL (Interactive Data Language), a scientific programming language, used heavily by atmospheric scientists, astronomers, and physicists.• ENVI (Environment for Visualizing Images), a commercial GIS application used to analyze geospatial data from satellites and aerial sensors. ENVI is used by scientists, commercial companies, and the Defense and Intelligence industry.One of my specific ongoing tasks in this position was developing data I/O support for these products. I became very familiar with many image and scientific data formats, including TIFF, HDF, and NetCDF, and I worked on detailed support for several commercial and public satellites, such as Himawari, NPP VIIRS, and the Digital Globe satellites.One of the projects I completed contributed to the company closing on a $2 million commercial sale to the US defense department. Several of my other projects, including NetCDF-3, Himawari, and Dataset Browser updates, became prominent features in the ENVI 5.4 release.Read more about the features to which I contributed in ENVI 5.4 here: http://harrisgeospatial.com/Support/Maintenance/TabId/2350/ArtMID/10427/ArticleID/15160/Whats-New-in-ENVI-54.aspxIn addition to software development, I was one of the regular authors of Harris' blog called IDL Data Point. This blog featured tips & tricks and interesting applications of the IDL software. Some of my posts attracted over 10,000 views.

As a research assistant, my work focused on studying the effects of cloud forcing, most specifically by cirrus clouds, in long-term climate models. My research also compared climate model forecasts to data from several of the U.S. Department of Energy's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) observation sites in order to validate the accuracy of the models.

As an REU student at Dartmouth College’s Thayer School of Engineering, I spent the summer of 2008 in a laboratory analyzing the magnetic properties of Manganese-Aluminum alloys. The project included extensive use of X-ray diffractometry.