Jonathan Raff Awarded NSF CAREER Award

Professor Jonathan Raff has been awarded an NSF CAREER Award for the amount of $649,000 over the course of 5 years to study the mechanisms of nitrous acid formation and loss in the atmosphere.

Jonathan Raff received an A.B. degree in Chemistry from Occidental College in 1998 and an M.S. degree in Chemistry from the University of Minnesota in 2001. In 2007 he received a Ph.D. in Environmental Science at Indiana University working with Ronald A. Hites. During this time he was awarded a U.S. EPA STAR Graduate Fellowship. From 2007-2010 he worked as an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow with Barbara J. Finlayson-Pitts at the University of California-Irvine studying atmospheric chemistry.

Jonathan is interested in chemical reactions that occur on environmental surfaces (e.g., airborne aerosols, urban infrastructure, soil, and vegetation) and contribute to chemistry in the atmosphere. Highly sensitive spectroscopic and mass spectrometry techniques along with flow tubes and chambers are used to study these processes under atmospherically relevant conditions. This research is important for understanding issues related to air pollution, human health, and climate.