February 2025:
February 14: A transdisciplinary team comprising Dr. Joseph Puthussery, Dr. Rajan Chakrabarty and Dr. John Cirrito won a Transdisciplinary Institute in Applied Data Sciences (TRIADS) grant for the project In Vitro Neurotoxicity and Socio-Environmental Analysis for Mapping Alzheimer’s Disease Risk Due to Particulate Matter Exposure. More details can be found in this article.
🎓February 10: Joshin Kumar successfully defended his dissertation and is now Dr. Kumar! Congratulations! Photo from his final dissertation defense below.
December 2024:
December 9-13: Group members Dr. Joseph Puthussery, Dr. Taveen Kapoor, Dr. Shrabani Tripathy, and Ganesh Chelluboyina attended and gave presentations at the AGU Annual Meeting in Washington, DC.
December 2: PhD candidate Ganesh Chelluboyina was named an inaugural recipient of the Washington University Provost’s Graduate Student Research Excellence Award. This recognition acknowledges significant contributions to research, highlighting independence, creativity, and scholarly productivity.
November 2024:
November 22: August Li successfully defended his thesis proposal and is now a PhD candidate. Congratulations!🎉
October 2024:
October 21-25: Chakrabarty group attended the 42nd American Association of Aerosol Research conference held at Albuquerque, New Mexico.
▲Group photo with lab and CASE members. Top row (L-R): Dr. Payton Beeler, August Li, Shu-wen You, Yash Dhansare, Dr. Joseph Puthussery, Yuxuan Ren, Joshin Kumar, Prabhav Upadhyay. Bottom row (L-R): Dr. Taveen Kapoor, Anika Matanhelia, Dr. Shrabani Tripathy, Jhao-hong Chen, Sumit Gupta, Ganesh Chelluboyina, Dr. Rajan Chakrabarty, Jash Saravia.
September 2024:
September 19: Dr. Taveen Kapoor published a first-author paper in Geophysical Research Letters examining the spatial distribution in surface aerosol light absorption across India. For more information, read the full research article: https://doi.org/10.1029/2024GL110089.
August 2024:
August 28: The lab published a paper in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science examining the snow darkening effect due to dark brown carbon aerosols. For more information, read this news article and the full research article: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-024-00738-7.
July 2024:
July 25: The lab published a paper in Nature Communications highlighting the light absorption enhancement of black carbon in pyrocumulonimbus clouds. For more information, read the full research article here: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-50070-0.
May 2024:
Chakrabarty and collaborators win Simons Foundation International grant for geoengineering. This is a three-year, $1.5 million grant to explore potential candidates for a geoengineering technology called stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI). See more coverage here.
April 2024:
Dr. Shrabani Tripathy joins the group as a Postdoctoral Associate. Welcome to the group!
December 2023:
December 8, 2023: AIR Lab teams up with WashU School of Medicine to develop breathalyzer test for COVID, RSV, and influenza A with $3.6 million grant from Flu Lab. Read more at: https://engineering.wustl.edu/news/2023/Team-to-develop-breathalyzer-test-for-COVID-RSV-influenza-A.html
December 5, 2023: Ganesh Chelluboyina is now a PhD Candidate! He successfully passed the candidacy examination on his research focused on “Snow radiative forcing by dark brown carbon aerosols”. Congratulations!🎉
October 2023: AAAR
Chakrabarty group attended the 41st American Association of Aerosol Research conference held at Portland, Oregon, USA
September 29, 2023: Dishit Ghumra is now a PhD Candidate! He successfully passed the candidacy examination on his research focused towards rapid direct detection of respiratory virus aerosols. Congratulations!
September 5, 2023: Several lab members attend a noise pollution workshop by Professor Harish Phuleria from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. The lab members express their gratitude for his visit.
August 23, 2023: The group welcomes Dr Taveen Singh Kapoor as a postdoctoral researcher after completing his PhD at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. He will study aerosol optical properties and their impact on the climate.
🎓 August 23, 2023: Congratulations Payton Beeler, now Dr. Beeler, on a successful final dissertation defense!
August 14, 2023: Dishit Ghumra presented his research at this year’s ACS Fall 2023 Conference held in San Francisco, California. He delivered an engaging talk on ‘Rapid point-of-care detection of SARS-CoV-2 aerosols in exhaled breath‘, highlighting the importance of swift and adaptable diagnostic tools to mitigate spread of respiratory virus aerosols, including SARS-CoV-2.
August 7, 2023: The lab published a paper in the Nature Geoscience journal highlighting the importance of absorption by dark brown carbon particles in wildfire emission plumes. For more information, read this news article and the full research paper: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-023-01237-9.
July 31, 2023: Joshin Kumar, alongside Payton Beeler, Benjamin J. Sumlin, and Rajan K. Chakrabarty, have contributed to a study published in the Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer titled “Aggregation-induced enhancements in aerosol absorption and scattering across the black-brown continuum”. Full text here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jqsrt.2023.108729.
July 27, 2023: Our work on point-of-care detection of SARS-CoV-2 aerosols in exhaled breath, led by Dishit Ghumra, is published in ACS Sensors. The proposed sting platform provides a rapid and non-invasive alternative to conventional viral diagnostics. Congratulations team! Full text here: https://doi.org/10.1021/acssensors.3c00512
July 17, 2023: Nishit has led a study published in the RSC Environmental Science: Atmospheres journal titled “Brown carbon absorptivity in fresh wildfire smoke: associations with volatility and chemical compound groups”. Full text here: https://doi.org/10.1039/d3ea00067b.
July 14, 2023: A study led by Taveen was published, titled “Optical Properties and Refractive Index of Wintertime Aerosol at a Highly Polluted North-Indian Site” in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres. It was conducted in collaboration with researchers from IIT Bombay and IIT Delhi. Full text here: https://doi.org/10.1029/2022JD038272
July 10, 2023: Our lab developed a real-time airborne virus monitor, led by Dr. Puthussery and published in Nature Communications. This breakthrough technology marks a major achievement in environmental surveillance. Congratulations team!
July 9-12, 2023: Dr. Rajan Chakrabarty and third year PhD students Joshin Kumar and Ganesh Chelluboyina delivered presentations at the International Conference on Carbonaceous Particles in the Atmosphere (ICCPA) at Berkeley, California.
June 8, 2023: The lab members gave students from John Burroughs School a hands-on demonstration for students on instrument development and combustion experiments.
Summer 2023: Aerosol Summer School
Dr. Chakrabarty initiated the Aerosol Summer School course, which is taken by master’s students from the WashU-IIT B joint master’s program and early graduate and undergraduate students who are interested in exploring aerosol research. During the course, students are introduced to various concepts of aerosol, including modeling, lab experiments, and field campaigns.
May 31, 2023: Dr. Puthussery presents his work titled “Real-time Detection of SARS-CoV-2 in Air” at the Air Quality Seminar Series hosted by the University of California Davis.
March, 2023: Joshin passes his proposal defense examination by presenting and defending a research plan for the rest of his PhD. Onwards, Joshin!
March 1, 2023: Dr. Puthussery gave an early career talk at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay titled: “Influence of Extreme Air Pollution Episodes on the Oxidative Potential of Ambient Particulate in Delhi, India.” Congratulations!
December 2022: Shu-wen and Prabhav joined the lab as PhD students. Welcome!
December 21, 2022: Marking the beginning of the holiday season with an informal lab group lunch.
December 9, 2022: Ganesh Chelluboyina won the Quad Fellowship with an award of $50,000. This fellowship is an initiative of the governments of Australia, India, Japan and the United States. He was invited to attend the official announcement in Washington, D.C. hosted by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo.
October 2022: AAAR
Chakrabarty group attended the American Association of Aerosol Research 2022 conference held at Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
October 2022: Dishit Ghumra was awarded the Best Student Oral Presenter award at the American Association of Aerosol Research 2022 Conference for his talk on the development of a breathalyzer for SARS-CoV-2 detection from exhaled breath. Congratulations!
October 2022: NSF ACCESS supercomputing time grant (EES220048) was awarded to Joshin to research on “First-principle-based modeling of the optical properties of amorphous carbonaceous aerosols”. Congratulations!
🎓 August 23, 2022: Now Dr. Chenchong Zhang! Chenchong has defended his thesis. Many congratulations and good luck ahead!
August 12, 2022: Joshin Kumar led a research published in the Atmospheric Measurement Techniques journal titled “Correcting for filter-based aerosol light absorption biases at the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement program’s Southern Great Plains site using photoacoustic measurements and machine learning”. Full text here: https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-15-4569-2022
July-August 2022: TRACER Campaign
Our group participated in the Tracking Aerosol Convection Interactions Experiment (TRACER) campaign in La Porte, Texas during the summer of 2022. This was a multi-university initiative hosted by the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program. A team of students camped in Texas for two months and collected aerosol optical and filter-based data. We installed several custom-built photoacoustic spectrometers to capture and study the aerosols from the coastal industrial town.
May 26, 2022: Lab members and Prof. A.B. Pandit, Vice Chancellor of the Institute of Chemical Technology (ICT) Mumbai, India, exchanged research ideas and career plans over dinner. We thank Prof. Pandit for his time and visit WashU.
May, 2022: Payton has been accepted in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) program which will see her conduct some of her doctoral research at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory for the next six months.
May-July, 2022: Taveen Singh Kapoor, a PhD student at IIT Bombay, was a visiting researcher in the lab over the summer.
February 23, 2022: Payton Beeler led a study published in the Journal of The Royal Society Interface titled “Fractality of tics as a quantitative assessment tool for Tourette syndrome”. Full text here: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2021.0742.
February 1, 2022: The group welcomes Dr. Joseph V. Puthussery a PhD graduate from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign – to join the group as a WashU-IITB distinguished postdoc fellow to research health-related aerosols. Welcome to the team, Joseph!
December 2021: Dishit Ghumra and August Li join the Chakrabarty Group as first-year PhD students. Welcome!
November 2021: Dr. Apoora Pandey, a PhD graduate from the lab, received the 2021 Sheldon K. Friedlander Award during the American Association for Aerosol Research (AAAR) annual conference. Way to go, Apoorva!
22 November 2022: Payton Beeler led a study published in the Atmos. Chem. Phys. journal titled “Constraining the particle-scale diversity of black carbon light absorption using a unified framework.” Full text here: https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-14825-2022.
12 October 2021: Payton Beeler led a study published in the Environmental Research Letters journal titled “Disparities in PM2.5 exposure and population density influence SARS-CoV-2 transmission among racial and ethnic minorities”. Full text here: 10.1088/1748-9326/ac29ea.
October 2021: Dr. Nishit Shetty rejoins the lab as a postdoc fellow.
🎓 August 30, 2021: Nishit Shetty, successfully defended his dissertation and is now Dr. Shetty! Congratulations! Customary celebration photographs below.
August 9, 2021: August 9, 2021: Benjamin Sumlin spearheaded a research study published in the Atmos. Chem. Phys. journal. The paper is titled “Diel cycle impacts on the chemical and light absorption properties of organic carbon aerosol from wildfires in the western United States.” The team explored the dynamic chemical and light absorption characteristics of organic carbon aerosol influenced by wildfires in the U.S. Full text here: https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-11843-2021.
June 2021: Joshin Kumar and Ganesh Chelluboyina cleared their Qualifying Exams and joined the lab. Welcome!
May 24, 2021: Chenchong Zhang led a study which got published in the Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer titled “Polarimetric sensitivity of light-absorbing carbonaceous aerosols over ocean: A theoretical assessment”. Full text here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jqsrt.2021.107759.
March 2021: Joshin Kumar, a first-year Ph.D. student, started his research rotation in the lab.
February 8, 2021: Nishit Shetty led a team in a research study published in the Aerosol Science and Technology journal. The paper is titled “Bias in quantification of light absorption enhancement of black carbon aerosol coated with low-volatility brown carbon.” The study delved into the complexities of how low-volatility brown carbon impacts the light absorption characteristics of black carbon aerosol. Full text here: https://doi.org/10.1080/02786826.2021.1873909.
November 9, 2020: Rajan K. Chakrabarty, along with Payton Beeler, Pai Liu, Spondita Goswami, Richard D. Harvey, Shamsh Pervez, Aaron van Donkelaar, and Randall V. Martin, published a pivotal study in the Science of The Total Environment journal. The research paper, entitled “Ambient PM2.5 exposure and rapid spread of COVID-19 in the United States,” examines the correlation between PM2.5 air pollution and the swift proliferation of COVID-19 across the U.S. Full text here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.143391.