Alexa and Zac presented posters at the 36th Informal Symposium on Kinetics and Photochemical Processes in the Atmosphere (ISKPPA), which was held this year at the Center for Environmental Research and Technology at UC Riverside.

Alexa, Kara, Zac, and Craig at ISKPPA

The following week was the 26th UCI Undergraduate Research Symposium, where Uyen, Khanh, and Duy again presented their work on Criegee intermediate reactions. As usual, UROP did an outstanding job organizing a conference that featured 342 oral and 493 presentations from 1267 student presenters who were mentored by 467 UCI faculty, spanning disciplines from across the whole campus.

Zac, Uyen, Khanh, and Duy at UROP

The 2019 Southern California Undergraduate Research Conference (SCURC) was held at Mount Saint Mary’s University in Los Angeles on April 13. Duy, Khanh, and Uyen presented a poster showing some of their recent work looking at the kinetics of Criegee intermediate reactions with ketones.

Duy, Khanh, Uyen, and Craig at the SCURC poster session

Last week Craig and Sara traveled to Chicago for the 10th International Conference on Chemical Kinetics hosted by the University of Illinois at Chicago. This 4-day conference featured talks from many different areas of research including pyrolysis, catalysis, and atmospheric chemistry.

Sara presented a poster on the reactions of the simplest Criegee intermediate with inorganic acids and alcohols:

They also had many opportunities to try the fantastic food Chicago has to offer, and highly recommend the cheeseburger with egg and bacon at Au Cheval.

They also visited The Bean!

Our building, Rowland Hall, was dedicated as a National Historic Chemical Landmark by the ACS on April 18th, in recognition of the Nobel Prize-winning work performed there by Sherry Rowland and Mario Molina that identified the role of chlorofluorocarbons in stratospheric ozone loss. A two-day symposium was held at the Beckman Center on April 18th–19th to mark the occasion, featuring distinguished guest speakers from academia, and local AirUCI contributions. Kara and Saswata Roy from Prof. Filipp Furche’s group gave a great joint TED-style presentation explaining how a combination of experiment and theory can provide insights into molecular photochemistry.

On May 12th, we attended the 34th Informal Symposium on Kinetics and Photochemical Processes in the Atmosphere held at UCSD. I gave a talk describing some of our work on the reactions of Criegee intermediates with trace atmospheric gases, Sara presented a poster on the same, and Kara loitered networked. Aside from learning some exciting new science, we also discovered that the tacos at Puesto in La Jolla are excellent.

Finally, we bade a fond farewell to Ben who has moved on to pastures new. This month he begins a post-doctoral position at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, working with Dr. Oliver Gessner and Prof. Steve Leone in the Ultrafast X-Ray Science Laboratory. We wish him all the best in the Bay Area and have no doubt that he will be tremendously successful there.

Last week Craig, Kara, and Liz traveled to Asilomar, CA to attend the Pacific Conference on Spectroscopy and Dynamics 2017.  Luck was on our side and we were not swept away by a tsunami or mudslide!

In the poster sessions Craig and Kara presented “Competing Pathways in the Near-UV Photochemistry of Acetaldehyde” and “UV photodissociation dynamics of CHI₂Cl and its role as a photolytic precursor for a chlorinated Criegee intermediate”.

Liz presented a talk entitled “Direct Kinetics Measurements and Atmospheric Implications of the Reactions between Criegee Intermediates and Tropospheric Pollutants”.

Congratulations to Vahe, who won a Best Oral Presentation prize at the Southern California Undergraduate Research Conference held at CSU Long Beach on April 23.  He impressed the judges with his talk describing the application of cavity ring-down spectroscopy to probe non-thermal chemical reactivity.

We’ve been getting around this summer presenting our work at several meetings.

In June, Liz attended the 11th International User Meeting and Summer School on Cavity Enhanced Spectroscopy held in Boulder, CO. She presented a poster on her recently published work using cavity ring-down spectroscopy to probe the kinetics of the CH₂I + O₂ reaction.

In July, Ben attended the 25th Conference on the Dynamics of Molecular Collisions held in Asilomar, CA, presenting a poster on his soon-to-be-submitted work on CH₂I₂ photodissociation dynamics, studied using velocity-map ion imaging.

Finally, I was invited to speak at the 33rd International Symposium on Free Radicals held in August in Squaw Valley, CA. I spoke about various topics related to the formerly elusive, but now ubiquitous Criegee intermediate and presented a poster summarizing some of Ben’s new work on the photochemistry of OCS. I have no pictures of the meeting itself, but I did meet a bear on the way.

Meanwhile, Kara spent her summer in the office learning how to use Molpro. Next year…