Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts blog

Vaughn Mangal is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Brock University in St Catharines, Ontario, Canada. Vaughn graduated in biochemistry and molecular biology in 2013 from Trent University in Canada where he remained for his PhD in environmental science under the supervision of Drs. Celine Gueguen and Alexandre Poulain. During his PhD, he received an NSERC postgraduate scholarship and the W. Garfield Weston Scholarship for his research on contaminant transport in northern aquatic ecosystems. During his PhD, he also patented 2 technologies that use algae to remediate metals from contaminated water sources. After graduating with his PhD in 2019, Vaughn was an NSERC postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Carl Mitchell at the University of Toronto Scarborough for two years. Vaughn uses his background in biochemistry and environmental science coupled with training in mass spectrometry to study the molecular biogeochemistry of organic matter and its implications for contaminant transport.  Since July 2022, Vaughn has established an active research program with field and lab components, looking at relationships between contaminant transport, human disturbances, and organic matter. At Brock, Vaughn teaches analytical chemistry, environmental chemistry, and quantitative chemical analysis courses.

Read Vaughn’s Emerging Investigator Series article “Impacts of land use on dissolved organic matter quality in agricultural watersheds: a molecular perspective” and read more about him in the interview below:

Your Emerging Investigator Series paper uses ultra high resolution mass spectrometry to study the molecular composition of dissolved organic matter (DOM) in agricultural watersheds to better understand land use impacts. I see that you also recently published another paper in ESPI on DOM in Canadian boreal forest streams. Thank you for choosing our journal! How did your research evolve from your very first publication to your more recent articles?

During my graduate studies, I had the opportunity to develop my interest in analytical chemistry and explore new strategies for solving environmental questions about organic carbon and contaminants. I published my first first-authored publication during the early years of my PhD in 2015 at Trent University, where I used a combination of fluorescent tagging and field flow fractionation to simultaneously separate, identify, and quantify sulphur species released from algae and sulphur-containing molecules in Canadian sub-arctic watersheds. I continued researching how contaminants are mobilized during the spring thaw of these large watersheds in northern Canada. My experience in biochemistry and molecular biology also allowed for a deeper investigation of how microorganisms like bacteria and algae respond to contaminant exposure and the implications for how microorganisms uptake metals like mercury and cadmium with increasing human disturbances. During my postdoctoral studies at the University of Toronto, I became very interested in the effects of forest harvesting on mercury biogeochemistry in Canadian forests and how industries can help refine their management practices to reduce mercury transport. My recent contributions build on my PhD research by focusing on how environmental factors influence the molecular properties of dissolved organic carbon and the implications of these changes on contaminant transport.

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment?

Since starting my research program at Brock University in 2022, I am very excited to help inspire the next generation of environmental chemists. I am also excited to work with collaborators to help refine management strategies to reduce contaminant transport in Lake Erie watersheds. It’s very promising to see a shift across industries towards achieving more sustainable practices informed by environmental research.

In your opinion, what are the most important questions to be asked/answered in this field of research?

One of the most important research questions is how plastic compounds are changing the natural biogeochemical cycles of carbon in aquatic systems. Not only can microorganisms use decomposed plastics as nutrient sources, but these plastics further complicate the fate and transport of other organic and inorganic contaminants. Developing methods to simultaneously characterize organic carbon and carbon derived from plastic pollution will be key to better understanding these interconnected biogeochemical cycles.

What do you find most challenging about your research?

One of the most challenging questions is how we translate small-scale processes and mechanisms into practical solutions and applications. Designing new analytical workflows and developing new ways to characterize organic carbon and contaminant transport is useful, but relating these mechanisms to complex ecosystems where not all variables can often be controlled is challenging.

In which upcoming conferences or events may our readers meet you?

I will be attending the International Conference for Analytical Sciences and Spectroscopy this year, and plan on attending conferences like the Canadian Geophysical Union (CGU), Canadian Chemistry Conference and Exhibition (CCCE), and Metabolomics 2025.

How do you spend your spare time?

I like spending time with my kids, running, and going for hikes in my spare time. I also enjoy gardening and playing soccer.

Which profession would you choose if you were not a scientist?

If I weren’t a scientist, I would have pursued a career in paramedics or physical therapy.

Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?

My advice would be that it’s never too soon to establish your own independent network of collaborators or colleagues. Work on building and maintaining relationships with other academics at conferences or with other labs, as communicating and collaborating with other scientists leads to new ideas. I’d also recommend working on scientific communication skills as effectively communicating your research to non-specialists is extremely important.

Theo is an Assistant Professor in the School of Energy and Environment at City University of Hong Kong. Her current research uses a combination of laboratory experiments and field observations to investigate the impacts of air pollution policies and climate change on the multiphase atmospheric chemistry of aqueous droplets and the formation and transformation processes of organic aerosols. Theo completed her undergraduate studies in Chemistry and Mathematics at the University of Toronto. She went on to complete Ph.D. studies in Physical Chemistry under the supervision of Prof. Stephen Leone and Dr. Kevin Wilson at the University of California, Berkeley. Her Ph.D. research focused on investigating fundamental reaction mechanisms that govern the heterogeneous photooxidation of organic aerosols. She then went on to complete postdoctoral studies at Georgia Institute of Technology under the supervision of Prof. Sally Ng and Prof. Rodney Weber. There, she performed laboratory chamber studies to investigate biogenic secondary organic aerosol formation mechanisms and participated in field studies to investigate the effect of ammonia on aerosol composition and acidity.

Read Theodora’s Emerging Investigator Series article “Aqueous photooxidation of live bacteria with hydroxyl radicals under clouds-like conditions: Insights into the production and transformation of biological and organic matter originating from bioaerosols” and read more about her in the interview below:

Your recent Emerging Investigator Series paper focuses on Aqueous photooxidation of live bacteria with hydroxyl radicals under clouds-like conditions: Insights into the production and transformation of biological and organic matter originating from bioaerosols. How has your research evolved from your first article to this most recent article?

My Ph.D. studies focused on the heterogeneous photooxidation of organic aerosols. My first lead-author publication (Nah et al., Anal. Chem. 2013) was on the application of Direct Analysis in Real Time Mass Spectrometry (DART-MS) in the real-time in situ chemical characterization of submicron organic aerosols. It demonstrated how we can use surface sensitive mass spectrometric tools to probe real-time changes in the chemical composition of the surface of submicron organic aerosols during heterogenous photooxidation. I have continued my research on atmospheric aerosol chemistry. However, my research interests have expanded even further to include the atmospheric chemistry of bioaerosols under different environmental conditions. In this most recent article, my group investigated what happens when live bacteria interact with hydroxyl radicals in clouds during the daytime. It builds on our previous work (Liu et al., Atm. Chem. Phys. 2023) which investigated the effects of pH and light exposure on the survival of bacteria and their ability to biodegrade organic compounds in clouds.

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment?

I have found this research area (i.e., atmospheric chemistry of bioaerosols) to be both exciting and challenging because I do not have a background in microbiology. In fact, I have not taken a single biology class in my entire life! I spent a lot of time during the COVID-19 lockdown learning about bacteria. I am lucky that I was able to establish a research collaboration with a microbiologist in my department who is interested in atmospheric bioaerosols. Our ongoing research collaboration has been fruitful and we have been able to leverage one another’s expertise to ask and answer interesting research questions on bioaerosols. In addition to investigating the atmospheric chemistry of bioaerosols in outdoor atmospheres, we have been investigating what happens when airborne bioaerosols and microorganisms adhered on surfaces interact with atmospheric oxidants and chemical compounds in the indoor built environment. Stay tuned for more of our work!

In your opinion, what are the most important questions to be asked/answered in this field of research?

At present, little is known about what happens when live microorganisms such as bacteria interact with atmospheric oxidants and chemical compounds in the outdoor and indoor atmospheres under different environmental conditions. These multiphasic interactions potentially have important implications for atmospheric processes, air quality, and human health. There are so many questions that still need to be asked and answered in order for us to gain a basic understanding of these interactions before we can even consider their implications. Asking and answering these questions will require the expertise of both atmospheric chemists and microbiologists.

What do you find most challenging about your research?

Communicating my research to people with different backgrounds and levels of expertise. A lot of my research use laboratory experiments to investigate fundamental reaction mechanisms and understand how things work at the molecular level. Sometimes, I find it challenging to convince others, especially those not in the atmospheric chemistry field, on the importance and relevance of my research approach to solve “real world” air pollution issues.

In which upcoming conferences or events may our readers meet you?

I will be presenting my work at the 9^th International Conference on Fog, Fog Collection, and Dew in Colorado in late July, and at the 2023 Atmospheric Chemistry Gordon Research Conference in Maine in early August.

How do you spend your spare time?

I spend most of my spare time watching travel documentaries to unwind. Recently, I have been spending some of my spare time learning Mandarin so that I can communicate more effectively with my Chinese collaborators.

Which profession would you choose if you were not a scientist?

If I were not a scientist, I would still want do something related to the environment. I could see myself working for an NGO involved in environment management and conservation work.

Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?

I have been fortunate to have encountered many amazing mentors who have been generous with their time and advice. I will share the same piece of advice that one of my mentors gave me when I was deciding on where to attend graduate school: You need to embrace change and be willing to step outside of your comfort zone. I find that this piece of advice can be applied to career development, research, and so on. I have relied on this advice at various points of my career, including when I decided to move to a new country to start my independent research career, and when I pursued opportunities for multi-disciplinary collaborations to work on interesting research questions.

Trevor VandenBoer joined the Department of Chemistry at York University as an assistant professor in analytical and environmental chemistry in 2019. His research involves development of instrumentation to probe the atmospheric chemistry of reactive nitrogen species. Emissions of reactive nitrogen have perturbed the global nitrogen cycle to unprecedented levels. These chemicals are introduced to the environment by human transportation, agricultural, cooking, cleaning, and industrial activities. His work focuses on impacts of these compounds on indoor and outdoor air quality with emphasis on the role of exchange at interfaces.

VandenBoer completed a PhD in Environmental and Atmospheric Chemistry at the University of Toronto focusing on the quantitation and atmospheric chemistry of atmospheric reactive nitrogen at a variety of national and international field locations, including an NSERC-supported exchange at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, CO. He then held a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship at Memorial University in St. John’s, Newfoundland where he quantified the exchange of reactive nitrogen at the biosphere-atmosphere interface across a latitudinal transect of boreal forest sites.

Read Trevor’s Emerging Investigator Series article “An instrument to measure and speciate the total reactive nitrogen budget indoors: description and field measurements” and read more about him in the interview below:

Your recent Emerging Investigator Series paper focuses on An instrument to measure and speciate the total reactive nitrogen budget indoors: description and field measurements. How has your research evolved from your first article to this most recent article?

From our initial study in a New York home, the levels of nitrogen oxide (NO_X = NO + NO₂) pollutants we observed created a lot of concern.¹ We first worked in a collaboration with materials chemist Michael Katz at Memorial University to design metal-organic frameworks, taking advantage of the highly porous nature of these materials, to selectively deactivate nitrous acid (HONO) indoors as potential next-generation technology to be placed in air handling systems.² Then we worked with organic chemist Chris Caputo at York University to design molecular BODIPY dyes as high-sensitivity probes that were also selective in passively sensing HONO without instrumentation indoors, as we discovered no such probes existed and that HONO was an interference in prior studies of nitrogen oxide pollution indoors.³ As the field evolved alongside this research, it became apparent to us that indoor air was as varied as the individuals who use indoor environments, meaning that we had to get new instruments into the hands of non-experts and a lot of indoor spaces to study them, to complement dedicated field campaigns using experimental homes. Taken together, this progression of work from our team and collaborators has evolved with the rising awareness on the need to improve indoor air quality, from identifying chemicals of concern, to targeting key components for better measurements, and developing solutions capable of mitigating indoor pollutants.

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment?

At the moment, we have a lot of different field projects at various stages of their life cycle and I am excited about all them! We have been designing new instruments to study nutrient use efficiency, air quality, and greenhouse gas emissions in agricultural settings; deploying our suite of instruments in a research cruise on the Atlantic Ocean to study the chemistry of marine fog during the Fog and Turbulence Interactions in the Marine Atmosphere (FaTIMA) campaign in the summer of 2022; and the teams at YorkU are preparing for an upcoming urban air quality campaign in Toronto during the summer of 2023 where NOAA and NASA aircraft will investigate our urban plume of Atmospheric Emissions and Reactions from Megacities to Marine Areas (AEROMMA), alongside our team of international collaborators making ground site observations. Working as part of big international teams allows researchers in the group to work on high-impact chemistry questions, interfacing with world-class resources and scientists, and it is always very exciting to facilitate these opportunities for them!

In your opinion, what are the most important questions to be asked/answered in this field of research?

With respect to our current work indoors, the answer is very broad, but remains: Is our typical indoor air good or bad and what are the best metrics to assess this? Answering this question is a huge challenge. More specifically, these are the questions that I think we are still trying to answer that feed into this: Are there important chemical transformations we need to consider or are physical properties of molecules and indoor surfaces controlling the composition of indoor air? Are there simple changes to our behaviours and activities indoors that can create major air quality improvements, or do we need to totally rethink how we handle our indoor air from a building-design and operation perspective?

What do you find most challenging about your research?

The logistics of conducting environmental chemistry fieldwork. This activity is very atypical compared to traditional laboratory-based chemistry experiments. Obtaining permissions, permits, and training to install field infrastructure in challenging locations while maintaining safety and high-quality analytical measurements is no small feat! This demands a substantial amount of time spent identifying, connecting, and committing to ongoing communications with a large team of experts spanning contractors, engineers, freight, etc. before we get to study the important chemistry we’re interested in at these locations.

In which upcoming conferences or events may our readers meet you?

You can meet me in March 2023 at the Spring Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Indianapolis, as part of the Bridging the Interfaces of Atmospheric Chemistry session, where I will be presenting the instrumentation in this work and some more recent findings we have obtained with it. In June, several group researchers and I will be at the annual meeting for the Canadian Society for Chemistry in Vancouver to present on several ongoing research projects in the team.

How do you spend your spare time?

While spare time is fleeting for an Assistant Professor, prioritizing activities like soccer, running, etc. are important to me for physical health. Similarly, time spent reading or gardening provide present-moment focus to unwind. When I just cannot keep the chemist in me at bay, I will admittedly use my free time for kitchen and brewing experiments, drawing from scientific principles.

Which profession would you choose if you were not a scientist?

If I was not a scientist, the profession where you’d be likely to find me would be one that bridges my agricultural upbringing with societal awareness of food systems, like efficiency in production or limiting waste.

Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?

Take your time in obtaining both your formal and informal training to get the most out of each step along the way. Make time during each step of your training to develop new transferrable skills for your future and broaden your scientific perspectives by sharing your research interests with as many people as you can.

References

1         S. Zhou, C. J. Young, T. C. VandenBoer, S. F. Kowal and T. F. Kahan, Environ. Sci. Technol., 2018, 52, 8355–8364.

2        D. McGrath, M. D. Ryan, J. J. MacInnis, T. C. VandenBoer, C. J. Young, and M. J. Katz. Chem. Sci. 2019. 10:5576-5581.  DOI:10.1039/C9SC01357A

3         D. Nodeh-Farahani, J. N. Bentley, L. R. Crilley, C. B. Caputo and T. C. VandenBoer, Analyst, 2021, 146, 5756–5766.

Dr. Amanda Hohner is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at Montana State University. Her research focuses on the characterization of source water quality and drinking water treatment processes. Within this area, she evaluates the effects of climatic disturbances and extreme events on watersheds and drinking water system resiliency. Prior to joining MSU she was an Assistant Professor at Washington State University. She completed her PhD and MS in Environmental Engineering at the University of Colorado-Boulder and her BS in Civil Engineering at Washington State University. In addition to research and teaching, she is actively involved in mentoring women and first-generation college students in engineering.

Read Amanda’s Emerging Investigator Series article “Emerging investigator series: “physicochemical properties of wildfire ash and implications for particle stability in surface waters” and read more about her in the interview below:

Your recent Emerging Investigator Series paper focuses on Physicochemical Properties of Wildfire Ash and Implications for Particle Stability in Surface Waters. How has your research evolved from your first article to this most recent article?

My PhD work and first paper primarily focused on wildfire effects on dissolved organic matter and disinfection byproduct formation during water treatment. My research has expanded to investigate post-fire water quality more broadly and in the context of wildfire effects on aquatic systems and environmental processes. The focus of this article is on the characterization of solid wildfire-ash particle characterization and properties that influence stability and mobilization in watersheds. It pushed me to incorporate new tools and analytical techniques from soil science and particle chemistry and look through the lens of ecosystems impacts rather than water treatment.

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment?

Wildfire and water quality research has gained a lot of momentum the last few years and it really requires interdisciplinary teams to integrate an understanding of the complex interactions involved. I’m excited about working with and learning from collaborators in forestry, hydrology, ecology, and environmental economics on addressing important and challenging research questions. It’s fun to step outside of our specific disciplines and continue learning.

In your opinion, what are the most important questions to be asked/answered in this field of research?

Unfortunately, in many regions wildfires are now high severity and catastrophic to communities and ecosystems. At the same time we need some level of fire on the landscape to maintain healthy forests and watersheds. Research and society need to understand what this balance looks like from a land and water management perspective and how we can move towards a more natural, healthy fire regime in the face of climate change.

What do you find most challenging about your research?

Observational and field-based studies include very complex environmental interactions that are out of our control such as wildfire behavior and weather. As scientists and engineers we like to have controlled experiments with clear explanations, but that is not the nature of post-fire environmental studies. It can be very challenging when we collect ash or water samples from a burned landscape to be able to form scientific conclusions, but at the same time it makes for exciting research with many unanswered questions to explore.

In which upcoming conferences or events may our readers meet you?

My favorite conferences to attend are the AWWA Water Quality & Technology Conference and Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors (AEESP) Conference.

How do you spend your spare time?

We have a three month old son, so I spend most of my spare time with him cuddling and playing, and on all of the other parenting adventures. We also like to get outdoors and take our pup hiking or running. In the winter we cross-country ski and in the summer we like to stand-up paddle board. We just recently moved to Bozeman, Montana and look forward to taking our son on outdoor adventures soon!

Which profession would you choose if you were not a scientist?

I like to argue, so maybe I would have been an environmental lawyer. If not that, then a K-12 teacher because I really enjoy teaching and mentoring students.

Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?

There are definitely ups and downs with research and academia and it is important to persevere and stay confident in yourself and your abilities. I find I rely on my mentors and close peers to keep me motivated and help me through challenges.