Allan Bertram
Professor, Chemistry Department
ORCID: 0000-0002-5621-2323
bertram@chem.ubc.ca
Allan Bertram received his BSc from the University of Prince Edward Island and PhD from the University of Waterloo, where he studied the freezing behaviour of polar stratospheric clouds. Following an NSERC Postdoctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he joined the Department of Chemistry at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in 2001. He was a Tier II Canada Research Chair in Environmental and Atmospheric Chemistry from 2001-2011, and in 2012 he became a full professor at UBC. He has been awarded an NSERC Discovery Accelerator Supplement Award (2008-2011), the Chemical Institute of Canada Environment Division Research & Development Dima Award (2015), the UBC Killam Faculty Research Prize (2017), and the The Brockhouse Canada Prize for Interdisciplinary Research in Science and Engineering (2020). He is also the former director of an interdisciplinary atmospheric aerosol program funded through the NSERC CREATE program. Currently, he serves as Co-editor of the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (2013 – present). The research in his group focuses on the chemistry and physics of atmospheric aerosols and the role these aerosols play in urban air pollution, climate change and atmospheric chemistry.
Current Group Members: Postdocs & Research Associates
Teresa M. Seifried
Postdoc
Groups: Bertram & Grant
tseifried@chem.ubc.ca
Research Area:
After completing her PhD in Chemistry at TU Wien, Austria, she joined UBC Chemistry in March 2022. Her research is dedicated to environmental science, with a focus on understanding the impact of carbonaceous aerosols on the environment and human health. Currently, she is exploring the potential effects of microplastics on atmospheric processes, specifically ice nucleation, and investigating how aging influences these properties. In addition, she collaborates with graduate student Matthew D. Kowal in the Grant Group to develop a new method for detecting nanoplastics using iSCAT microscopy, with the ultimate goal of quantifying nanoplastics in environmental samples. Beyond her lab work, Teresa is the lead coordinator of the UBC Cluster for Microplastics, Health and the Environment, an interdisciplinary group of scholars aiming to support the development of informed policies regarding microplastics pollution.
Changda Wu
Postdoc
changdawu@chem.ubc.ca
Research Area:
Changda received his PhD degree in atmospheric aerosol science from Queensland University of Technology in Australia, where he studied light-absorbing carbonaceous aerosols in Australian urban and remote areas impacted by bushfires. He joined the Bertram group in late January 2024 and will be focusing on physicochemical properties of biomass burning organic aerosols upon ageing.
Julia Zaks
Research Associate
zaks@chem.ubc.ca
Research Area:
Julia joined the Bertram group at UBC in August 2020 and is working on instrumentation for measuring aerosols, including the Aerosol Mass Spectrometer. Prior to UBC, Julia spent seven years at Agilent Technologies working on time of flight mass spectrometry, electrospray ionization, and buffer gas cooling of ion beams. Julia received her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 2012, where she studied the regulation of photosynthesis using ultrafast laser spectroscopy and mathematical modeling.
Current Group Members: Graduate Student
Nealan Gerrebos
Graduate Student
ngerrebos@chem.ubc.ca
Research Area:
Biomass burning organic aerosols are a poorly understood class of particles in the atmosphere that can impact health, global warming and visibility. Nealan’s current work is focused on measuring and parameterizing the properties of brown carbon and other species from forest fires so that atmospheric models can better predict the chemical and physical changes these aerosols undergo as they spread throughout the troposphere.
Zoë Golay
Graduate Student
zgolay@chem.ubc.ca
Research Area:
Changing climate has increased the scale and severity of wildfires, accelerating the release of biomass burning organic aerosols into the upper and lower atmosphere with implications for climate, human health, and air quality. Zoë’s current work focuses on the multiphase chemistry of biomass burning organic aerosol in the stratosphere. During her HBSc at the University of Toronto and internship at the Paul Scherrer Institute, Zoë has previously researched the multiphase photochemistry of NOx with environmental surfaces and within snow.
Sepehr Nikkho
Graduate Student
ORCID: 0000-0001-6183-6889
sepehrnikkho@chem.ubc.ca
Research Area:
Sepehr received his master in chemical engineering from the University of Tehran, Iran, where he studied graphene-based membranes for gas separation applications. In January 2022, Sepehr joined the Bertram group to pursue his Ph.D. studying the physical and chemical properties of atmospheric aerosol particles. His current work is focused on the phase behavior of aerosols and the ice nucleating particles in the atmosphere and investigating their impact on climate change and air quality.
Lian Pharoah
Graduate Student
Group: Bertram & Patey
pharoahl@chem.ubc.ca
Research Area:
It takes a temperature as low as -38 C degrees for ice to nucleate in the atmosphere, but this is subject to change when in the presence of a heterogeneous ice nuclei. Some known great heterogeneous ice nuclei are things such as mineral dust, bio particles, and feldspars. The mechanism in which this occurs is still poorly understood and the understanding of this can have a significant effect on the climate. Researching the mechanism on a molecular scale may provide the answers needed for this phenomenon.
Gurcharan Uppal
Graduate student
guppal@chem.ubc.ca
Research Area:
Gurcharan completed her MSc at uOttawa where she compared bioanalytical methods for the characterization of DNA aptamers to SARS-CoV-2 proteins. Gurcharan’s current research focuses on atmospheric ice nucleating particles (INPs) which play a critical role in enabling ice crystals to form in the atmosphere. Some examples of INPs include mineral dusts, bacteria, fungal spores, and pollen. A better understanding of these particles in field samples will be crucial for improving climate predictability.
Soleil Worthy
Graduate Student
sworthy@chem.ubc.ca
Research Area:
Ice particles play an important role in the atmosphere by influencing physical processes and subsequently the overall climate. Atmospheric ice particle formation is encouraged by ice nucleating particles (INPs), which provide energetically favorable conditions for ice formation of aerosol liquid droplets. There are still many questions regarding the abundance, identities, and overall climate impact of atmospheric INPs. Soleil’s research is focused on the quantification and characterization of ice nucleating particles in field samples.
Mei Fei (Janice) Zeng
Graduate Student
janzeng@chem.ubc.ca
Research Area:
Biomass burning, such as forest fires, emits organic aerosols into our atmosphere that impact our climate and health. Janice completed her BSc in Chemistry at UBC and joined the group in September 2023. She is investigating the viscosity and phase behaviour of biomass burning organic aerosols. These findings can improve climate models and develop methods to address forest fires.
