Clarkson University Distinguished Professor Emeritus Philip K. Hopke was recently announced as the winner of the Fissan-Pui-TSI Award.
The Fissan-Pui-TSI Award is granted by the International Aerosol Research Assembly (IARA) to recognize international collaboration in the field of aerosol science and technology between researchers/engineers residing on at least two different continents. The award may be shared between two or more collaborating individuals or teams.
Hopke worked with Pentti A. Paatero, principal at YP-Tekniikka Ky Company in Finland, who received an honorary degree from Clarkson in 2016.
Paatero and Hopke began their collaboration in 1993 and continued past the retirement of Paatero. Their work has led to the development and widespread use of Positive Matrix Factorization (PMF) as a key tool for identifying and quantifying pollution sources in ambient aerosol studies.
Initially, their work focused on better tools to determine particle size distributions where the emphasis was on the development of appropriate bounds on the distributions at each size rather than a definitive value. Then began their work on improved source apportionment methods. Paatero began to visit Clarkson each summer in 1994 and the active collaboration resulted in 32 journal papers that have resulted in over 2367 citations.
