Air Quality

As the policy manager for autonomous vehicle policy at AAA Northern California, Nevada and Utah, Fellow Xantha Bruso is developing and implementing AAA’s AV policy strategy to advance AV safety while enabling innovation. She also supports strategic initiatives to accelerate AV deployment and foster mobility solutions.

Fellow Holmes Hummel is the Founding Director of Clean Energy Works, a nonprofit organization that seeks to accelerate private capital utility investments in inclusive clean energy solutions.

The goals of the project between Environmental Health Coalition (EHC) and Switzer Fellow Dr.

Fellow Martha Matsuoka co-authored the chapter "Working Together to Clean Up Freight Transportation" in the new report from the Poverty & Race Research Action Council, Strategies for Health Justice: Lessons from the Field.

China is the world's biggest polluter -- and now one of its largest producers of clean energy. Which way will China go in the future, and how will it affect the global environment? Data scientist Angel Hsu describes how the most populous country on earth is creating a future based on alternative energy -- and facing up to the environmental catastrophe it created as it rapidly industrialized. Watch the talk

Scientists have found a new culprit contributing to China’s notorious wintertime smog, and controlling it could help sustain the significant improvements in air quality that Beijing and other northeastern cities experienced last winter, according to research published on Thursday. Scientists from Harvard and two Chinese universities reported that emissions of formaldehyde — principally from vehicles and chemical and oil refineries — played a larger role than previously understood in producing the thick, toxic pollution that chokes much of the country each winter.

Over the past decade, more researchers have focused on the correlation between segregation and broad pollution exposure. Residents of a city like Memphis, they have found, are exposed to more pollution than those living in a city like Tampa, Fla., which is less racially divided.

Five interdisciplinary teams will receive Gund Catalyst Awards between $35,000 and $50,000 to establish new research projects seeking real-world solutions to critical environmental issues. The inaugural Catalyst Awards will accelerate new efforts on global climate modelling, renewable biofuels, climate impacts on mountain communities, nitrogen ‘trouble zones’ and sustainable agriculture.

If anyone knows where to find refuge from air pollution near Los Angeles freeways, it’s Suzanne Paulson. The UCLA atmospheric chemistry professor has spent years studying how invisible plumes of dirty air from car- and truck-choked roadways spread into surrounding neighborhoods — increasing residents’ risk of cancer, asthma, heart disease and other illnesses.