2011 - Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences ...

Juliane Fry
Sabbatical
Ph.D., California Institute of Technology
Project: Investigating nitrate-initiated secondary organic aerosol
formation in the laboratory and in Colorado Front Range forests
Juliane Fry is an assistant professor of chemistry and
environmental studies at Reed College, in Portland, Ore.
Fry’s research focuses on atmospheric chemistry, aerosol
formation and air pollution. She is investigating the
source of particulate hazes—dirty-looking, low-visibility
air filled with microscopic particles—that form in forests
downwind of industrial and urban centers.
These tiny atmospheric particulates are important
to public health because they are linked to asthma and
cardiac disease. While scientists know that nitrogen oxide
gases—emitted from such sources as coal and fossil-fuel
combustion—initiate the particulate formation, they don’t
fully understand which nitrates and reaction mechanisms
are involved. Working with Fred Fehsenfeld, Steve Brown,
Jose-Luis Jimenez, Doug Day and Jim Smith, Fry will
assemble a group of instruments capable of measuring
various species of nitrates and particulate size. They will
then monitor pollution plumes flowing into the Manitou
Forest Observatory, near Woodland Park, Colo., and also
conduct chamber experiments at NCAR to pinpoint the
responsible agents. Successful results would assist policy
makers in developing strategies to reduce haze.
Sponsor: Fred Fehsenfeld
Klara Hlouchova
Postdoctoral
Ph.D., Charles University in Prague,
Czech Republic
Project: Study of pentachlorophenol
hydroxylase, a key enzyme in a novel
microbial metabolic pathway for
pentachlorophenol degradation
Klara Hlouchova is working in
Shelley Copley’s group investigating
a novel metabolic pathway that
has evolved in the soil bacterium Sphingobium chlorophenolicum
in response to the extensive use of pentachlorophenol
(PCP)—a pesticide that has been contaminating the
environment since the 1930s.
The S. chlorophenolicum pathway can degrade PCP, but
because the pathway is at a very earl stage of evolution, it
is still quite inefficient. Hlouchova intends to uncover the
structures of the key PCP degradation enzymes from S.
chlorophenolicum and to address the reasons for their poor
catalytic ability. Using in vitro evolution techniques, her
goal is to evolve an improved version of S. chlorophenolicum
that could be used for remediation of PCP-contaminated
waste streams.
Sponsor: Shelley Copley
Krishna Kumar Kanikicharla
Postdoctoral
Ph.D., University of Pune, India
Project: Seasonal forecasting of Indian summer monsoon rainfall:
Diagnostics and synthesis of regional and global signals
Krishna Kumar Kanikicharla studies how anthropogenic
climate change affects the variability and predictability of
the Indian and East African monsoons. Monsoonal rains can
provide up to 90 percent of a region’s yearly precipitation,
and billions of people depend upon them for agriculture,
hydroelectric power and drinking water.
Temperature differentials between two areas—principally
cooler air over the sea and warmer air over land—
drive, in large part, the changing wind and precipitation
patterns characteristic of monsoons. Consequently, climate
models show that global warming may alter some monsoon
behavior, causing more sporadic drought in some
places and floods in others. Kanikicharla will work with
Balaji Rajagopalan’s group to analyze extensive observational
data and design sensitive global models. The
ultimate goal is to develop user-friendly interactive Web
tools for analyzing and forecasting monsoons and other
weather phenomena.
Sponsor: Balaji Rajagopalan
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