Atmospheric and Interfacial Chemistry
Professor, Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences
Offices: Burnside Hall 808
Otto Maas 421
Labs: Otto Maas 240 & Burnside Hall 820
Tel.: (514) 398-6931, (514) 398-3615
Fax: (514) 398-3797 | (514) 398-6115
parisa.ariya [at] mcgill.ca (E-mail)
Academic background
- Hon. B.Sc., in Chemistry, 1992, First class degree, Dean's honnour role & recipient of CSC, SOA, NSERC, ... awards
- PhD. in Chemistry (Physical Chemistry), 1996, Supervisors: Professor Hiromi Niki and Professor Geoff Harris, CAC, York University, Canada, recipient of NSERC, OGS, NATO, York, ... awards
- Max-Planck Postdoctoral fellowship, Max Planck Institute, Atmospheric chemistry division, Mainz, Germany, 1996-1998, Supervisor: Professor Paul Crutzen
- Director, AIRPUR Network on Air quality in cold-urban climate ()
- Dima Award of the Canadian Society for Chemistry, 2019
- Clara Benson Award of the Canadian Society of Chemistry, 2010
- William Dawson Scholar (平特五不中 Equivalent to CRC Tier II), 2000-2005 & William Dawson Scholar 2006-2011
- 聽American Chemical Society Progress Award (2005)
- 聽FQRNT Strategic Professor-Scientist (1999-2002)
- Associate member of 平特五不中 School of Environment
- Editor, Cambridge press book- Environmental
- Editorial board, Sustainability
- 聽Member of NSERC-CREATE Mine of Knowledge
- 聽Member of Centre for Computational Chemistry
- 聽Member of Compute Canada
- Member of Calcul Quebec (numerical modelling network)
- Member of the editorial advisory board of the American Chemical Society Journal of Analytical Chemistry (ACS) 2006-2008
- Associate editor, Geochemical (Japan), 2008-2010
Research interests
Our laboratory's mission is to explore major fundamental,聽and applied research聽questions聽on chemical and physical processes involving aerosols, as well as organic and metal pollutants of relevance to the Earth's atmosphere and its interfaces. 聽Our direct research contributions are to the fields of Atmospheric sciences and climate change, specifically aerosol-cloud interaction, air pollution, atmosphere-ocean interactions,聽physical and analytical chemistry, sustainable chemistry and technology, nanoscience, environmental health and medicine.
The IPCC (2013) points to the importance of aerosol-cloud processes due to their impact on the absorption and scattering of radiation, altering the Earth's climate, where as the WHO (2015) predominantly considers aerosols as to be health hazards. It has become increasingly clear that both the climate and toxicity-health impact of nanoparticles are significantly affected by physical and chemical processes such as size, gas-particle partitioning, hygroscopicity, liquid-liquid phase separation, redox kinetics, surface tension, viscosity, molecular configuration, active sites, surface properties, and chemical composition. We have established expertise and infrastructure to perform aerosol research, including nanoparticles in air and air/snow/water surfaces, by contributing to address key uncertainties described above, and pioneering novel questions and solutions, with which affect climate and health challenges.
Our research are performed through complementary field (from Arctic to urban), laboratory and modeling research. Our state-of-the-art kinetic, surface and photochemical laboratory investigations are performed using ultra-fast and sensitive detection using various high resolution lasers, second harmonic generation, long path FTIR, FT-Raman, various mass spectrometry, microscopy, surface sciences, air pollution and aerosols analyzers. We develop techniques and perform highly sensitivity measurements of trace gaseous and particulate compounds. Complementary computational and atmospheric chemical modelling of the reaction intermediates in the atmosphere to simulate the complex physical-bio-chemical interactions. During the last decade, we develop novel sustainable technology in air and water pollution remediation and smart sensors, which are efficient, energy neutral, recyclable with no waste, and their life cycle analysis have been considered prior to their design and development.
Our active research themes in our laboratories are:
- Aerosol-cloud interactions: Microphysics, ultra-trace characterization, ice nucleation
- Metals (namely Hg) in atmosphere and air/snow/water interface.
- Bioaerosols: Impact on Chemistry and Physics of the atmosphere.
- Development novel techniques for sustainable technology: Natural material, recyclable, energy neutral, efficient, with detailed studies of life cycle analysis
- Nanoparticles in atmosphere and in air/snow/water interfaces
- Urban & Arctic air pollution
Some recent publications
See publications on our Publications page or in the