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Current Group Members

Current Group Members

Jon Abbatt (PI)

Contact: jonathan.abbatt@utoronto.ca

Jon obtained his BSc from UofT Chemistry in 1984 and spent 16 years in the US (Harvard PhD, MIT Post Doc, U of Chicago Assistant/Associate Professor) before returning to UofT. His research interests are in atmospheric and environmental chemistry, with a focus on particulate, cloud, and indoor chemistry. Specific research topics include: rates and mechanisms of multiphase chemistry in outdoor and indoor environments; the role of particles in promoting the formation of both liquid water and ice clouds; field measurements of VOCs and aerosol composition especially in remote regions such as the Arctic; aerosol chemistry related to wildfires.

Jon has been on the editorial boards of Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, Atmospheric Measurement Techniques, Scientific Reports, and Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres. He is currently an associate editor for Science Advances. He was a member of the NASA/JPL Data Evaluation Panel for Atmosphere Modeling and co-chair of the 2011 Gordon Conference on Atmospheric Chemistry. He has served on scientific steering committees for the International Global Atmospheric Chemistry project, Max Planck Institute Mainz, and Center for Aerosols and Climate. He has been given the CIC Environmental Research Award and CIC Medal, was made a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, was elected to the Royal Society of Canada, and won a Killam Research Fellowship. He was the PI of NETCARE (Network on Climate and Aerosols) which won the NSERC Brockhouse Award for interdisciplinary research. Jon is currently the PI of the BBCan (Biomass Burning in Canada) project funded by ECCC (bbcan.net).



Jillian Downey

Contact: j.downey@mail.utoronto.ca

Jillian received her B.Sc. in Chemistry at Mount Allison University in May 2022. In her undergraduate degree, she studied the relationship between antioxidant decay and oxidant production from the inhalation of common quinones found in aerosol, under the supervision of previous Abbatt group member, Dr. Jenny Wong. Jillian joined the Abbatt group in September 2022. Currently, her research focuses on the heterogenous ozone chemistry on indoor surfaces.



Daniel Alba Elena

Contact: daniel.alba@uclm.es

Daniel obtained his B.Sc. degree in Chemistry from Universidad de Málaga and his M.Sc. degree in Advanced Biotechnology at Universidad Internacional de Andalucia. Daniel joined Dr. Cámara-Artigas group focused on protein structural determination in 2019 at Universidad de Almería. He started his Ph.D. studies in 2021 at Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha for study the formation and decomposition processes of organic hydroperoxides in atmospheric samples under Dr. Baeza-Romero and Prof. Valero supervision. He joined the Abbatt group at September 2023 as an International Visiting Graduate Student.



William Fahy

Contact: william.fahy@mail.utoronto.ca

Will received a joint B.Sc./M.Sc. in chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University in 2021 under Professor Ryan Sullivan where he studied how atmospheric transformations of volcanic ash can influence its ice nucleation activity. He joined the Abbatt and Mabury groups at U of T for his PhD in September 2021 to study aqueous and heterogeneous transformations of environmental contaminants.



Yao Yan Huang

Contact: yaoyan.huang@mail.utoronto.ca

Yao Yan received her H.B.Sc. in Environmental Chemistry from the University of Toronto Scarborough in June 2023. During her undergraduate studies, she did some work with the Donaldson group looking at ozone gradients in lakeshore environments and urban grime using ion chromatography. She joined the Abbatt group for her PhD in September 2023 to study the heterogenous chemistry of plastic additives.




Carolyn Liu-Kang

Contact: carolyn.liukang@mail.utoronto.ca

Carolyn completed her B.Sc. in chemistry from Université de Montréal. During her undergraduate studies, she did some work involving the identification of a sediment sample using Raman spectroscopy, as well as the characterization of pesticides using HPLC. She joined the Abbatt group for her PhD graduate studies in September 2019 where her research will focus on the formation of nitrogenated BrC (brown carbon) compounds from biomass burning sources.




Laura-Helena Rivellini

Contact: laurahelena.rivellini@utoronto.ca

Laura did her PhD as a collaboration between the SAGE department of Douai Engineering School and the Laboratory of Atmospheric Optics from Lille University (France). The aim was to link the chemical composition and optical properties of aerosols in West Africa (Senegal) by coupling on-line aerosol mass spectrometry with in situ and remote sensing instruments. In 2018, she pursued a post-doctoral research under the supervision of Dr. Alex K. Y. Lee at the National University of Singapore, by investigating carbonaceous aerosol sources and mixing state using a Soot-Particle aerosol mass spectrometer (SP-AMS). She joined the Abbatt group as postdoctoral fellow in July 2022 to study the chemical and optical properties of biomass burning emissions and their impact on outdoor and indoor air quality. Laura is a current member of the BBCan research team.




Hongru Shen

Contact: hr.shen@utoronto.ca

Hongru obtained her Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences from Fudan University (China) in 2023. Her doctoral research was a collaboration between Fudan University (China) and Juelich Forschungszentrum (Germany), focusing on the highly oxygenated organic molecules chemistry. She joined the Abbatt and Chan groups as a joint postdoctoral fellow in September 2023 to work on particles from non-traditional burning.




Xinke Wang

Contact: xinkezx.wang@utoronto.ca

Xinke conducted his doctoral research at IRCELYON (Institut de recherches sur la catalyse et l'environnement de Lyon) and obtained his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 (France) in 2020. In 2021, he joined the group of Prof. Barbara J. Finlayson-Pitts as a post-doctoral scholar at the University of California Irvine. His previous research studies focused on atmospheric photosensitized chemistry, aqueous nitrate photolysis reactions and the environmental fates of emerging contaminants such as neonicotinoid pesticides. He joined the Abbatt group as a postdoctoral fellow in August 2023 to study the autoxidation processes of indoor organic films.




Yutong (Maggie) Wang

Contact: maggiewyt.wang@mail.utoronto.ca

Yutong received her H.B.Sc. in environmental chemistry from University of Toronto in June of 2020. During her undergraduate studies, she briefly worked on the quantification of isocyanate ion’s photo-oxidation rate using relative rate kinetics. Her undergraduate thesis involved using Ion Chromatography for isocyanate concentration determination. Yutong started her PhD in the Abbatt group in September 2020, where her research focuses on brown carbon and factors that may impact its optical properties.




Kristen Yeh

Contact: kristen.yeh@mail.utoronto.ca

Kristen received her B.Sc. in forensic science from Trent University in May of 2020. During her undergraduate studies, she briefly worked with Giardia intestinalis to investigate the localization of proteins during in vitro encystation. Her undergraduate thesis used MALDI FT-ICR-MSI to examine changes to fingerprint residues after implementing a cleaning process. Kristen started her PhD in the Abbatt group in September 2020, where her research investigates how humans are exposed to cannabis smoke indoors. Kristen is also a member of the BBCan research team, with a specific focus on using low-cost sensors to determine the impact of wildfires on indoor air quality.




Jie Yu

Contact: jiejie.yu@mail.utoronto.ca

Jie obtained her H.B.Sc. Degree in Chemistry at University of Toronto in April 2019. Her undergraduate research with Dr. Abbatt focused on heterogeneous chlorination of reduced nitrogen species using ATR-FTIR and DART-MS. She joined the Abbatt group again in September 2019 to pursue a PhD in Environmental Chemistry, with research focus on VOC partitioning in indoor surface reservoirs.