Air Quality

“This really has to do with discriminatory planning processes in which communities of color and low-income communities are often located near ports, major roadways and distribution centers, and so therefore are disproportionately exposed to diesel exhaust,” Regan says.

Scientists are working to understand "the chaotic cascade of dynamics that causes a dust storm to initiate a particular point in space and a particular point in time," says Thomas Gill.

Globally, we generate $120 billion of agricultural waste every year. What farmers cannot sell, they often burn, with catastrophic consequences for human health and the environment. Takachar has developed a cheap, small-scale, portable technology that attaches to tractors in remote farms. The award-winning machine converts crop residues into sellable bio-products like fuel and fertilizer, and reduces smoke emissions by up to 98%.

Assessing the air quality and environmental equity benefits for accelerated use of diesel particle filter and selective catalytic reduction systems on heavy-duty diesel trucks.

Candice Youngblood has received a Skadden Fellowship to advance equitable transportation planning centered on the economic resilience and health of California’s low-income communities of color through regulatory and policy advocacy and litigation with Earthjustice. She first joined Earthjustice’s Los Angeles office as a litigation assistant in 2015 and returned as a Skadden Fellow in 2021.

As Environmental Justice Coordinator for the US Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Air and Radiation, Francisco works to coordinate and support environmental justice initiatives across EPA air programs.

NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory tracks Earth's CO2 by measuring the sunlight reflected off of Earth's surface, as carbon dioxide and oxygen absorb light at very specific wavelengths.

Regan Patterson has been recruited as one of three inaugural professors in UCLA Samueli's Mentor Professor Program. The program is a new initiative "designed to hire faculty with a demonstrated record of, or who show exceptional promise for, mentorship of students from underrepresented and underserved populations."

Kimberley Miner has accepted a role as Systems Scientist with the new Earth Systems Observatory at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. NASA is working with countries around the world to pioneer the Earth System Observatory-- a virtual constellation able to sense the hydrology, land-surface change, atmosphere and so much more-- at finer scales than we have ever seen before. Learn more about the mission