Atmospheric chemistry textbooks typically display "canonical" oxidation schemes for organic oxidation. Such mechanisms are typically derived from studies focusing on hydrocarbons under relatively few reactivity conditions. We search for and study chemistry that happens outside of these schemes by using unconventional experimental approaches that allow us to access challenging reactivity conditions, or by targeting functionalized species with the potential to undergo untraditional chemical reactions. 

As wildfires become more common, more and more built environments will be impacted by smoke. Understanding and mitigating human exposures to wildfire smoke constituents in indoor environments is a major challenge of the climate crisis. When smoke infiltrates a building, smoke-derived volatile organic compounds (VOCs) can be adsorbed on indoor surfaces and off gas over time, creating a sustained source of indoor air pollution. We are using mass spectrometry to examine how smoke infiltration and partitioning processes impact indoor air quality. Separate work in collaboration with Dr. Derek Urwin (UCLA, LACFD) looks at exposures of first responders due to VOCs from smoke-exposed firefighter PPE

Gas-phase laser spectroscopy is a powerful tool for developing a mechanistic understanding of individual elementary reaction steps and the reactive intermediates involved. We use laser spectroscopy both to understand canonical atmospheric reaction steps at a molecular level, and explore new reactivity of functionalized reactive intermediates.  

Atmospheric oxidation is a highly complex, multigenerational process. We use automated mechanism generation to explore oxidation networks systematically, explain experimental results, and search for unexplored reaction pathways, which we then target via experiments.