• Interfacial Chemistry for the Environment

Understanding the role of aerosols in climate change is an important scientific challenge that is critical to accurately predict the environmental impact of future energy technology options, atmospheric chemistry, and human health. Although aerosols are important in a wide range of scientific disciplines, there is much that remains to be understood, particularly their surface properties and influences on atmospherically relevant reactions. Many physical and chemical processes at aerosol surfaces have been appreciated theoretically and conjectured experimentally. We thus explore the novel coupling of surface-selective nonlinear spectroscopy to various problems related to aerosol surfaces. The topic is to understand the physical and chemical properties at aerosol surfaces that are of key relevance to cloud formation and global climate change. There are many fundamental scientific questions to be addressed. Can aerosol particle surfaces serve as efficient media for photochemical processes? Can photochemical reactions be made faster on particle surfaces? How do these surface reactions affect cloud condensation properties of aerosol particles?