Sampling from the Atmospheric Chemistry Smörgåsbord
Dr. Benjamin Brown-Steiner (’08)
Program Director, NSF Atmospheric Chemistry Program
Research Assistant Professor, Clarkson University Institute for a Sustainable Environment
May 24, 2022 at 10 am via Zoom
In this talk I will give an overview of what I have been up to since graduating from Clarkson University in 2008. While atmospheric chemistry has always been the core of my work, I have been lucky enough to have sampled widely from the smörgåsbord that is atmospheric chemistry. For my graduate work at Cornell University, I used the Community Earth System Model (CESM) to examine trans-Pacific transport of Asian pollutants and the impact on surface ozone and the ability to adequately simulate ozone-temperature relationships in the United States. I also collaborated with econometricians in a project where they developed an economic model predicting inter-state and inter-industry shipping flows and I used these flows to estimate black carbon emissions from trucks and trains. As a postdoc at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, I worked with a collaborative team of earth scientists and economists in trying to balance chemical mechanism complexity with their need for large ensemble global climate simulations. I also worked on a project quantifying the impact of interannual variability on detecting ozone signals. At Atmospheric and Environmental Research, I worked on a broad set of smaller projects that included smoke chemistry, aerosol simulations, machine learning, emissions modeling, and statistical models.
Biography:
Dr. Benjamin Brown-Steiner (Clarkson University Class of 2008) has recently joined the Institute for a Sustainable Environment as a Research Assistant Professor (Courtesy Appointment). His research interests include atmospheric chemistry, emissions, and climate science with a focus on uncertainty quantification, model complexity, and the impact of natural and internal variability. At Cornell University he studied the influence of Asian emissions on air quality within the U.S. and worked with an interdisciplinary team of scientists and economists to develop a black carbon emissions inventory for trucks and trains. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he studied the variability of surface ozone and the uncertainties associated with identifying signals and also compared chemical mechanisms of different complexities in climate models. At Atmospheric and Environmental Research (AER), he worked on emissions inventory development and supported a variety of projects, including testing and updating chemical mechanisms, testing out statistical and machine learning tools, and studying the impact of biomass burning on U.S. air quality. He is currently a rotating Program Director at the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the Atmospheric Chemistry Program. He is passionate about science communication and outreach, and teaches classes on climate, emissions, and birdwatching in his local community. As he has never really done laboratory chemistry, he treats his kitchen as a laboratory for various chemical (baking) and biological (fermenting) experiments.