Nadine Borduas-Dedekind
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ADVICE AND INSIGHTS FROM UBC FACULTY ON REACHING OUT TO SUPERVISORS
These videos contain some general advice from faculty across UBC on finding and reaching out to a potential thesis supervisor.
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Theses completed in 2010 or later are listed below. Please note that there is a 6-12 month delay to add the latest theses.
Mixed-phase clouds are important climate regulators, providing significant annual precipitation and global cloud coverage. An increase in wildfires in the past decade is changing cloud cover and cloud composition which are currently difficult to predict due to a lack of mechanistic understanding. Although there is evidence of the ability of organic aerosols to nucleate ice under mixed-phase cloud conditions, the underlying physicochemical mechanism through which organic materials promote ice nucleation is an active area of research. The goal of this thesis is to study the mechanism through which lignin, and, by extension, biomass burning organic aerosols, nucleate ice in the atmosphere. To determine ice activity of lignin, we employ a bottom-up approach by synthesizing lignin nanoparticles (LNPs). LNPs have controllable, measurable, characteristics; valuable for elucidating the mechanism of ice nucleation of lignin. To determine the role of size and surface properties, we synthesized lignin nanoparticles (LNPs) from commercially available Kraft lignin and tested their freezing ability in our home-built Freezing Ice Nuclei Counter (FINC). LNPs were characterized for their size and dispersity with dynamic light scattering (DLS). Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) provided additional confirmation of shape and dispersity. We then prepared LNP solutions of different sizes at equal concentration via thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) to isolate the role of size on ice nucleation. Our FINC and DFA results confirmed that lignin nanoparticles, ranging in size from 80 – 500 d.nm, at the same concentration (0.2 mg/mL) are ice active with T\textsubscript{50} values ranging from -14.96 to -15.91 ºC. We found that few large LNPs nucleate ice with the same ability as many small LNPs. Normalizing the freezing data to mass and number suggests that aggregation facilitates ice nucleation of LNPs in the 10s and 100s of nanometers in size. From this research, we further contribute to the growing literature suggesting the key role of aggregation, and therefore likely of chemical composition on organic aerosols' ability to nucleate ice. These findings help understand how lignin within wildfire organic aerosols are able to nucleate ice and hence impact the ice crystal concentration in mixed-phase clouds.
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Publications
- High-speed cryo-microscopy reveals that ice-nucleating proteins of Pseudomonas syringae trigger freezing at hydrophobic interfaces (2024)
Science Advances, 10 (27) - Singlet oxygen is produced from brown carbon-containing cooking organic aerosols (BrCOA) under indoor lighting (2024)
Environmental Science: Atmospheres, 4 (6), 611-619 - The presence of nanoparticles in aqueous droplets containing plant-derived biopolymers plays a role in heterogeneous ice nucleation (2024)
Journal of Chemical Physics, 161 (9) - Journals with open-discussion forums are excellent educational resources for peer review training exercises (2023)
Earth System Science Data, 15 (3), 1437-1440 - Regional Sources and Sinks of Atmospheric Particulate Selenium in the United States Based on Seasonality Profiles (2023)
Environmental Science and Technology, 57 (19), 7401-7409 - Seasonal variations in the production of singlet oxygen and organic triplet excited states in aqueous PM2.5 in Hong Kong SAR, South China (2023)
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 23 (16), 9245-9263 - The Ozonolysis of Methylated Selenide Compounds in the Atmosphere: Isotopes, Kinetics, Products, and Mechanisms (2023)
Environmental Science and Technology, 57 (35), 13079-13087 - Tracking the Photomineralization Mechanism in Irradiated Lab-Generated and Field-Collected Brown Carbon Samples and Its Effect on Cloud Condensation Nuclei Abilities (2023)
ACS Environmental Au, 3 (3), 164-178 - Tropospheric ozone (O3) pollution in Johannesburg, South Africa: Exceedances, diurnal cycles, seasonality, Ox chemistry and O3 production rate (2023)
Clean Air Journal, 33 (1) - Singlet Oxygen Seasonality in Aqueous PM10is Driven by Biomass Burning and Anthropogenic Secondary Organic Aerosol (2022)
Environmental Science and Technology, 56 (22), 15389-15397 - Development of the drop Freezing Ice Nuclei Counter (FINC), intercomparison of droplet freezing techniques, and use of soluble lignin as an atmospheric ice nucleation standard (2021)
Atmospheric Measurement Techniques, 14 (4), 3131-3151 - Lignin's ability to nucleate ice via immersion freezing and its stability towards physicochemical treatments and atmospheric processing (2020)
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 20 (23), 14509-14522 - Spatial and temporal variability in the ice-nucleating ability of alpine snowmelt and extension to frozen cloud fraction (2020)
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 20 (1), 163-180 - UVB-irradiated laboratory-generated secondary organic aerosol extracts have increased cloud condensation nuclei abilities: Comparison with dissolved organic matter and implications for the photomineralization mechanism (2020)
Chimia, 74 (3), 142-148 - Charting a course for chemistry (2019)
Nature chemistry, 11 (4), 286-294 - Comparing Industrial Amination Reactions in a Combined Class and Laboratory Green Chemistry Assignment (2019)
Journal of Chemical Education, 96 (1), 93-99 - Development of the DRoplet Ice Nuclei Counter Zurich (DRINCZ): Validation and application to field-collected snow samples (2019)
Atmospheric Measurement Techniques, 12 (12), 6865-6888 - Isocyanic acid (HNCO) and its fate in the atmosphere: A review (2019)
Environmental Science: Processes and Impacts, 21 (5), 793-808 - Photomineralization mechanism changes the ability of dissolved organic matter to activate cloud droplets and to nucleate ice crystals (2019)
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 19 (19), 12397-12412 - Reactive Oxygen Species Production from Secondary Organic Aerosols: The Importance of Singlet Oxygen (2019)
Environmental Science and Technology, 53 (15), 8553-8562 - Singlet Oxygen Photooxidation of Peptidic Oxazoles and Thiazoles (2019)
Journal of Organic Chemistry, 84 (5), 2439-2447 - Sources of isocyanic acid (HNCO) indoors: A focus on cigarette smoke (2019)
Environmental Science: Processes and Impacts, 21 (8), 1334-1341 - The Green Chemistry Initiative’s contributions to education at the University of Toronto and beyond (2019)
Green Chemistry Letters and Reviews, 12 (2), 187-195 - Exploring Conditions for Ultrafine Particle Formation from Oxidation of Cigarette Smoke in Indoor Environments (2018)
Environmental Science and Technology, 52 (8), 4623-4631 - Nucleation of ultrafine particles arising from oxidation of cigarette smoke in indoor environments (2018)
15th Conference of the International Society of Indoor Air Quality and Climate, INDOOR AIR 2018 - Seasonal influences on surface ozone variability in continental South Africa and implications for air quality (2018)
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 18 (20), 15491-15514 - The Natural Atmosphere (2018)
Green Chemistry: An Inclusive Approach, 131-150 - Tracking toxic isocyanic acid (HNCO) in indoor environments (2017)
Healthy Buildings Europe 2017 - Gas Phase Oxidation of Nicotine by OH Radicals: Kinetics, Mechanisms, and Formation of HNCO (2016)
Environmental Science and Technology Letters, 3 (9), 327-331 - Gas-Phase Mechanisms of the Reactions of Reduced Organic Nitrogen Compounds with OH Radicals (2016)
Environmental Science and Technology, 50 (21), 11723-11734 - Research highlights: Laboratory studies of the formation and transformation of atmospheric organic aerosols (2016)
Environmental Science: Processes and Impacts, 18 (4), 425-428 - Solubility and reactivity of HNCO in water: Insights into HNCO's fate in the atmosphere (2016)
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 16 (2), 703-714 - Experimental and theoretical understanding of the gas phase oxidation of atmospheric amides with OH radicals: Kinetics, products, and mechanisms (2015)
Journal of Physical Chemistry A, 119 (19), 4298-4308 - Solubility and reactivity of HNCO in water: Insights into HNCO's fate in the atmosphere (2015)
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions, 15 (17), 24217-24249 - The potential of methylsiloxanes as solvents for synthetic chemistry applications (2014)
Green Chemistry, 16 (3), 1282-1296 - Gas phase oxidation of monoethanolamine (MEA) with oh radical and ozone: Kinetics, products, and particles (2013)
Environmental Science and Technology, 47 (12), 6377-6383 - Ion chromatographic separation and quantitation of alkyl methylamines and ethylamines in atmospheric gas and particulate matter using preconcentration and suppressed conductivity detection (2012)
Journal of Chromatography A, 1252, 74-83 - Cyclopalladation of N-phenylbenzamides: Synthesis and structure of bimetallic palladium(II)-complexes (2011)
Inorganica Chimica Acta, 369 (1), 247-252 - Aerobic and electrochemical oxidative cross-dehydrogenative-coupling (CDC) reaction in an imidazolium-based ionic liquid (2010)
Chemistry - A European Journal, 16 (27), 8162-8166 - Pd-catalyzed ortho-arylation of phenylacetamides, benzamides, and anilides with simple arenes using sodium persulfate (2010)
Chemical Science, 1 (3), 331-336 - Copper-catalyzed oxidative coupling of benzylic C-H bonds with 1,3-dicarbonyl compounds (2008)
Journal of Organic Chemistry, 73 (19), 7822-7825
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