AIRUCI - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Senior Scientist Award, 1999
Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Elected 2002
Job Titles:
- Research Fellow
- Research Fellowship
Dr. James N. Pitts, Jr. was an additional resource for our team from AirUCI's inception until his death on June 19, 2014 at the age of 93. He was Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Riverside, co-founder and past director of the University of California Statewide Air Pollution Research Center, and was an AirUCI senior research chemist until the end. He is greatly missed. Visit the Jim Pitts memorial page
Dr. Freese joined UCI's Earth System Science faculty in July 2025. She researches the fundamentals, impacts, and mitigation of climate change and air pollution. Specifically, she focuses on the intersection between the transition to a zero-emissions energy system, air pollution, and mitigation and adaptation to climate change. Much of her work is community based and policy oriented, melding applied and fundamental earth sciences. Her studies utilize a combination of climate and chemical transport models, energy system modeling, socio-economic data, and health impact assessments.
She previously worked on environmental policy and community science at the Wilson Center's China Environment Forum (Washington, DC), the Rock Environment and Energy Institute (Beijing, China), and Green Camel Bell (Lanzhou, China).
Our final Fulbright Fellow, Prof.Styliani Constas of the University of Western Ontario, arrived in early 2023 and finished her term at the end of June 2023. Prof. Patrick Ayotte of the University of Sherbourg, Quebec, served from January 2022 to July 2022. Prof. Thomas Colin Preston was with us from September through December 2021. Our second Fulbright Scholar, Prof. Hind al-Abadleh of Wilfrid Laurier University, joined us from December 15, 2018 through April, 2019. Dr. Jonathan Abbatt of the University of Toronto was the inaugural Fulbright Scholar at the AirUCI Institute from January through April 2018. All our Fulbright scholars conducted collaborative research projects with AirUCI groups and gave presentations to the campus science community as well as teaching an upper-level Chemistry course. We continue working with all our Fulbright Fellows on joint projects. Visit our Fulbright page
Job Titles:
- Outstanding Graduate Student Award in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, Washington State University ( 2014 )
Dr. Guenther is an international leader in atmospheric and terrestrial ecosystem research who has published more than 280 peer-reviewed journal articles. He has developed numerical models that are widely used by the scientific and regulatory communities to simulate biogenic reactive gas and aerosol emissions for air quality and climate modeling. He has led more than 40 integrative field studies on six continents in tropical, temperate, and boreal ecosystems to provide observations to advance understanding of biogenic emissions and their role in air quality and climate. He served as chair of the Global Emissions Inventory Activity (GEIA) and Integrated Land-Ecosystem Process Study (iLEAPS) core activities of the International Geosphere Biosphere Program (IGBP) and was a contributing author for the Third and Fourth Assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Dr. Carlton was the scientific leader of the SOAS campaign, member of the ACCORD Science Committee at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and member of the National Research Committee tasked with identifying priorities and strategic steps forward for atmospheric chemistry research over the coming decades.
Jack Brouwer received his B.S. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering degrees from UCI, and his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1993.
Dr. Smith is interested in understanding the chemical processes responsible for the formation of nanometer-sized particles in the atmosphere, as well as studying their impacts on human health and the Earth's climate. To accomplish this, he develops instruments, like the Thermal Desorption Chemical Ionization Mass Spectrometer and the Cluster Chemical Ionization Mass Spectrometer, for determining the molecular composition of ambient nanoparticles and key gas-phase precursors. He uses these instruments in laboratory experiments and on field campaigns all over the world; recent campaigns have taken place at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, the forests of Central Finland and the Colorado Rocky Mountains, and the Amazon rainforest of Brazil.
He has previously served as a Scientist in the Atmospheric Chemistry Observations and Modeling Laboratory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado as well as Research Director in the Department of Applied Physics at the University of Eastern Finland in Kuopio, Finland. He brings to the ORU expertise in measurements of atmospheric chemical composition as well as design and development of unique laboratory apparati and field instruments.
At NCAR from 2000-2015, he led the development of the Thermal Desorption Chemical Ionization Mass Spectrometer (TDCIMS), an instrument that can measure the molecular composition of atmospheric nanometer-sized particles. He also developed the Biogenic Aerosol Chamber for studying the formation of secondary organic aerosol from the photo-oxidation of real plant emissions. Dr. Smith designed and coordinated the development of the Manitou Experimental Forest Observatory-a ground-based research site in Colorado studying the fundamental biogeochemical processes that link and regulate the carbon and water cycles. Dr. Smith has published more than 60 peer-reviewed journal articles and written or contributed to a number of books.
Prof. Randerson's storied career brings considerable expertise in the study of the global carbon cycle using remote sensing and in-situ measurements and different types of models. Current research themes in his laboratory include climate-carbon cycle feedbacks, land use change, and the effects of fire on ecosystem function and atmospheric composition. He has conducted field work in Alaska and Siberia to assess the long-term impacts of fire on surface energy exchange and fluxes of carbon dioxide. After serving as faculty at Caltech, in 2003 James moved to UC Irvine where he now holds the position of Ralph J. and Carol M. Cicerone Professor of Earth System Science. He serves as a member of the Biological and Environmental Research Federal Advisory Committee for the U.S. Dept. of Energy, Office of Science.
Job Titles:
- Adjunct Associate Research Scientist, Lamont - Doherty Earth Observatory
In addition to her position in ESS, Prof. Baldwin also serves as Adjunct Associate Research Scientist, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University. She is broadly interested in how large-scale atmospheric dynamics influence regional climate and climatic extremes, with an eye to climate change and policy applications. Her group has three main research thrusts:
Kim Fortun, professor of anthropology, studies environmental risk and disaster. She is an interdisciplinary, mixed methods ethnographer specializing in comparative studies of environmental knowledge, injustice and governance. She teaches environmental studies; science and technology studies; and experimental ethnographic methods and research design. She uses experimental ethnographic methods to understand how people in different geographic regions and organizations deal with environmental problems, health risks and major disasters. Kim is particularly focused on industrial disasters - chemical plant explosions and massive breakdown of industrial systems. Her fieldwork has spanned highly populated regions in India and the United States where she's focused on both catastrophic disasters and more recently on slower moving disasters, including air pollution. Through research, she's found that that air pollution - recognized as a major killer of people worldwide - has reached catastrophic proportions in India and is responsible for a growing number of health concerns.
Together with her husband and anthropology associate professor Michael Fortun who is also an AirUCI faculty, they've found that scientific research on the sources and health impacts of air pollution has consolidated impressively in recent decades, showing that air pollution is not only responsible for a host of respiratory ailments, but may also contribute to conditions like Alzheimer's and diabetes. New understanding of the significance of air pollution has also transformed approaches to public health, challenging governments at municipal, state, regional and national levels as well as organizations like the World Health Organization. They are especially concerned about compound, intersectional vulnerability and what can be thought of as "combo disaster" resulting from the ways problems in any one system (atmospheric, political, ecologic, technologic) interlace with and exacerbate problems in other systems, such as societal and resource security. Climate change produces especially powerful combo disasters that easily overwhelm available means of understanding and addressing associated problems.
Professor Dennin's main research interest is systems that exhibit emergent properties. These include the behavior of complex fluids, such as foam and sand, as well as the complex dynamics of biological systems. He also studies systems that are driven out of equilibrium and model systems for biological membranes.