Breath of fresh air…
Three new faculty members join Division of Atmospheric Sciences

DR. OLIVER CHANG
Dr. Oliver Chang knows what it’s like to breathe easy—on the small island of Penghu, his home in Taiwan, the sky is blue, the water is crystal clear and it’s not unusual to see dolphins swim by as you take in the area’s natural beauty.
His first flight to Los Angeles was another matter. On descent, he found gray skies and more labored breathing. So, Dr. Chang chose to become part of the solution. “I wanted to do something useful—to make a difference. You start looking around, noticing the differences in people’s lives—everyone deserves to see the beauty of nature no matter where they live.”
DRI recently welcomed Chang as an assistant research professor where, after a period of initial orientation in the Environmental Analysis Facility, in Reno, he will move to Las Vegas to assist in developing a carbon analysis laboratory.
Carbonaceous aerosol emissions from man-made sources, such as diesel trucks, have a significant effect on air quality in urban areas. Chang will research and quantify the physical and chemical properties of these emissions to understand better their impacts on air quality, visibility and climate.

Chang also will conduct source emission and air monitoring studies to build up the body of knowledge of emission inventories for air quality regulation development. He also hopes to identify chemical markers, indicative of an emission source type, for source apportionment studies.

Chang received a bachelor’s degree in geophysics from the National Central University in Taiwan. He then earned a master’s degree in 1995 and a Ph.D. in 2000 in environmental engineering from the University of Southern California.

After graduation, he served one year as the liaison between the Dutch National Institute of Public Health and the Environment and the Southern California Particulate Matter Center and Supersite. Collaboration between the two entities allowed for better understanding of air pollution from a medical standpoint with regard to public health studies—such as what pollutants may be associated with the occurrence of asthma.

“We learned from each other which aerosol properties are important for the medical field to know about, for example, and what measurement and monitoring information they need for assessing the risk to public health. In America we have more localized pollution from vehicular sources, whereas in the Netherlands pollution is more regional.”

Chang later was employed as a senior technology engineer with the GE Energy & Environmental Research Corp. He determined the best operating conditions for dilution sampling, designed a compact dilution sampler and helped develop dilution method standards accepted by ASTM International.

DR. DAVID DUBOIS
DRI also welcomes a familiar face, Dr. David DuBois, as an assistant research air quality scientist. DuBois spent his earlier graduate student days with DRI and returns to work in the Las Vegas office on the Western Regional Air Partnership and the Central Regional Air Planning Association “Causes of Haze” projects. In 1991, DuBois received a master’s degree in physics, and he just finished his Ph.D. at the University of Nevada Reno’s Atmospheric Sciences Graduate Program.
DuBois brings with him years of experience as an environmental engineering scientist and manager with the New Mexico Environment Department’s Air Quality Bureau in Santa Fe, N.M. His research interests in atmospheric chemistry and modeling the dispersion of air pollutants make him an excellent candidate to work on the multi-year “Causes of Haze” project.

DuBois will look at what is causing haze in national parks or wilderness areas and how to reduce it. The scope of his work includes everything west of the Mississippi River and reaches Alaska and Hawaii. “We’re attacking it broadly on a network scale first—of all the identified sites, we look at clusters, similarities. Then we look at regional patterns, then by park and by site.”

Like many in the air quality business, DuBois has been the bearer of bad news at times, informing people about the pollutants in their air and how much it’s going to cost to clean them up. But DuBois finds the most gratifying part of his work in trying to find out what is causing pollution and providing advice in a consulting role. “We’re protecting public health based on scientific evidence—although you can’t see them, particulates are harmful to everyone and may affect those you love, such as your grandmother or six-month-old son.” With experience in GIS applications to the environment, remote sensing methods and modeling of air pollutants from the micro- to regional-scale, DuBois’ talents and interests will help clear the “haze” about why our national parks suffer from poor air quality.

DAVID SIMERAL
Question: where can you find someone who can address siting, equipment purchasing, deployment, sensing, communications, archival retrieval, analysis and display of data about atmospheric or hydrologic elements, with extra interest in measurements over longer time frames? Answer: David Simeral—DRI’s new assistant research meteorologist. The Western Regional Climate Center on DRI’s Reno campus is often approached about “in situ” or in place monitoring of the environment for research projects. With Simeral’s experience in meteorology, climatology and field programs as well as his knowledge of field instrumentation, he’s a good match for DRI’s needs.

Simeral’s fieldwork with the climate center will involve installing instrumentation to monitor the climate in areas such as White Mountain Research Station in Bishop, Calif., or Yosemite National Park. The general public and researchers alike will welcome Simeral’s improvements on existing stations with upgrades that will allow stations to be networked so they can access real-time data, such as mountain-top wind speeds or snow pack temperatures in Yosemite this winter.

“It’s important, for example, to the people at the U.S. Geological Survey and the California Cooperative Snow Survey, so they can monitor snow-pack conditions that help them forecast runoff potential for agriculture and drinking water.” The cutting-edge technology Simeral’s installing can be found throughout the Sierras and in the Lake Tahoe area.

Simeral received his bachelor of science in geography from Arizona State University in 1994, with subsequent graduate studies at Northern Arizona University from 1994 to 1997 involving snow surface energy exchange in the San Francisco Mountains near Flagstaff. He also spent five years in Alaska, where he was logistics coordinator for the Alaska Avalanche School. He assisted in teaching field workshops in avalanche hazard evaluation and rescue.

— Heather Emmons