Measuring Air Toxics With California's Frontline Communities

Speakers

Clare E. B. Cannon, Ph.D. 

Cannon is an Associate Professor in the Department of Human Ecology at the University of California, Davis and Interim Director of the UC Davis Institute of the Environment. Her work focuses on the intersections of social and environmental justice in urban and rural contexts particularly around risks and resilience to disasters, developing and implementing climate adaptation planning and policies, and reducing health disparities. She uses diverse methods including community engaged, quantitative, spatial, and qualitative approaches to conduct this work. She currently has active projects across California, the US, Australia, and Britain. As an internationally recognized scholar, she has published over 75 peer reviewed publications on these topics. Follow more of her work at https://clarecannon.ucdavis.edu.

Junbeom Jang, Ph.D.

Jang is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of California, Davis Air Quality Research Center. His research focuses on developing cost-effective instrumentation for air quality monitoring. He specializes in the real-time detection and source identification of airborne heavy metals, as well as the chemical speciation of Chromium (Cr) using Raman spectroscopy. His work aims to improve the accuracy of air quality assessments for impacted communities by integrating low-cost monitoring technology with environmental health perspectives. He earned his Ph.D. from the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) in South Korea.

Brenda Lopez Reyna, Ph.D.

Lopez Reyna is a Postdoctoral scholar at the University of California Davis, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. Her work focuses on ambient air monitoring through the use and development of low-cost instruments. Her interests includeinstrumentation improvements for the measurement of toxic heavy metal particulates using spark-induced breakdown spectroscopy, as well as toxic volatile organic compounds using gas chromatography - mass spectroscopy. She is a second year UC President’s PostdoctoralFellow and actively works with social scientists for deployment of low-cost instruments at environmental justice communities.