In January 2026, the Princeton team successfully completed a joint sampling project with collaborators at the Indian Institute of Technology - Madras, in Chennai, India. The Zondlo group integrated their mobile lab sensors with low-cost air quality sensors from IIT-Madras on a mobile 3-wheel electric vehicle (pictured below). Sampling included…
We successfully completed the first phase of ammonia emissions from fertilizer plants for a hydrogen economy. Phase 2 will begin in Spring 2026.
Dr. Yunpo Li and 3rd year graduate student Ryan Boyd won a Postdoctoral Presentation Award and Graduate Presentation Award, respectively, for their joint poster presentation at the Andlinger Annual Meeting. Their poster, titled Ammonia and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from the U.S. Ammonia Supply Chain was presented at…
A large-scale study was released today in Nature Water, led by Zondlo group alumni Dr. Dan Moore with Zondlo group members and alumni Nathan Li, Dr. Hongming Yi, Dr. Lei Tao, James McSpiritt, Vladislav Sevostianov, Lars Wendt, and Professor Mark Zondlo. After an intensive field campaign in which 96 US water treatment plants were…
Dr. Hongming Yi, our associate research scholar, who has been a pillar of our instrumentation optimization and optical design, is leaving our group. He will be starting a new chapter at Abbott, applying optics to medical applications. We sincerely thank him for his contributions and wish him the very best in all his future endeavors.
Capt. Eric Savini, an MSE student in Civil and Environmental Engineering, joins the group. Eric is a Captain in the U.S. army, and joins Princeton on a DoD fellowship on a faculty track at West Point. Welcome Eric!
In June, the group enjoyed welcoming Dr. Geetika Barman and Dr. Rumiaya Pervin from IIT-Madras to Princeton to discuss upcoming collaborations on air quality measurements in Chennai, India.
Please welcome Angelina DiPaola and Sasha Gor to the group! They will be working on connecting GPS to our commercial Licor portable sensors and using them to measure N2O emissions from local farms.
Angelina is a rising sophomore in Electrical and Computer Engineering here at Princeton. Sasha is a rising sophomore in Biology and…
Yun has been accepted into High Meadows Environmental Institute’s Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy Graduate Fellowship Program (HMEI-STEP). She will be working with Professor Jesse Jenkins, Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering and Andlinger Center for Energy & Environment on policy recommendation to make ammonia…
Dan Moore successfully defended his PhD thesis in February 2024. Dan will start his new position at WattTime.org as a data scientist this July. Congratulations Dr. Moore!
Dr. Yunpo Li joins the group as a postdoc. Dr. Li did his PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology. His work with the Zondlo group will involve wastewater sampling with the mobile laboratory.
Vlad presented his work at the Mirsens Conference in Wroclaw, Poland
Xuehui Guo successfully defended her Ph.D. dissertation, entitled "Ammonia Emissions, Deposition, and Variability through In Situ, Ground-Based, and Remote Sensing Observations" She will be pursuing postdoctoral work at the University of Virginia. Congratulations, Xuehui!
Daniel Moore was awarded Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) grant for quantifying agricultural nitrogen emissions, particularly fertilizer emissions, from satellite platforms with the IASI, CrIS, and TROPOMI instruments. Congratulations, Dan!
Vlad Sevostianov has been awarded the prestigious 2021 DoD National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship. Vlad’s Ph.D. research will focus on the syntheses of new sensing technologies and approaches with in-situ field measurements and remote sensing measurements. Congratulations, Vlad!
We welcome Vlad Sevostianov to our group, the CEE Department, and Princeton University. In addition to being a Fulbright Scholar, Vlad conducted undergraduate research with Prof. Scot Martin at Harvard University using low cost sensors and drone-based platforms for VOC measurements. We are thrilled to have him work with us for his Ph.D. studies…
We recently finished our first phase of field sampling for agricultural waste and wastewater emissions in California and the Mid-Atlantic, in collaboration with Prof. Francesca Hopkins’ group at UC-Riverside. The two groups deployed novel mobile laboratory platforms for comprehensive sampling of greenhouse gases, carbon and nitrogen species,…
Levi has been awarded a NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) fellowship at Ames Research Center. His project will be "Surface-Atmosphere Fluxes using Unmanned Systems".
'The Seasonal Rhythms of Ammonia' featured as today's image of the day, prepared by Prof. Mark Zondlo and Rui Wang.
Read more about our field work, the 2018 Kilauea eruption, and future analysis plans including linking information from ground-based networks, model, and satellite, here.
Prof. Mark Zondlo was quoted about research to better understand ammonia emissions, here.
Prof. Mark Zondlo and his recent research projects were featured in the Andlinger Center news, where Mark currently serves as associate director of external partnerships. In the spotlight were our new electric vehicle mobile sensing platform, including a video of the system in action, as well as work sensing methane on drones. Read the article…
Xuehui’s NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship (NESSF) project is entitled “Understanding Tropospheric Ammonia through Remote Sensing Measurements.”
The story, “Vehicles, not farms, are likely source of smog-causing ammonia,” can be read at: https://www.princeton.edu/news/2017/03/30/vehicles-not-farms-are-likely-source-smog-causing-ammonia.
Da’s Princeton Environmental Institute Program in Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy (PEI-STEP) proposal is titled “Investigation of Monitoring Strategies of Atmospheric Ammonia for Ammonia Regulation in the United States.”
The story by Patricia Daukantas covers many aspects of our recent and ongoing research, including Toolik Lake methane measurements, mobile laboratory studies during CARE-BEIJING, methane emissions from CNG vehicles, open-path ammonia sensing during DISCOVER-AQ, and ongoing work to study fugitive methane emissions from natural gas infrastructure…
Levi was one of ten students selected to the Princeton Energy and Climate Scholars, an interdisciplinary group broadly covering climate change and its intersection with energy systems.
Victor Fu, an undergraduate at University of Southern California and MIRTHE REU student working in our group during summer 2014 was awarded the best poster award at the 2014 MIRTHE Summer Workshop in Princeton, NJ. His poster was entitled "Spatial Surveys of Methane Emissions from Natural Gas Powered Vehicles in Beijing, China during the…
David Miller successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation, entitled "Ammonia and Aerosol Emission Impacts: New Insights with Open-path Measurements." Congratulations, David!
We participated in EDF Barnett Coordinated Campaign October 15, 2013 to examine fugitive emissions in the near-field from gas/oil sources
Jake Buglione, an undergraduate at Villanova University and MIRTHE REU student working in our group during summer 2013 was awarded the best poster award at the 2013 MIRTHE Summer Workshop in Princeton, NJ. His poster was entitled "Autonomous Atmospheric Sensing using an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Platform." Congratulations, Jake!
Minghui Diao successfully defended her Ph.D. dissertation, entitled "Ice Supersaturation and Cirrus Cloud Formation From Global In-situ Observations." She will be pursuing postdoctoral work at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Congratulations, Minghui!
Dr. Lei Tao, postdoctoral research associate, was awarded first prize in Princeton Engineering Innovation Forum. Congratulations, Lei!
Minghui Diao has been awarded the NCAR Advanced Study Program (ASP) post-doctoral fellowship. Congratulations, Minghui!
Our multi-gas mobile measurement platform with open-path QC laser sensors was featured in an article entitled "Mobile air sensor lab takes a California road trip" by Environmental Monitor, which focuses on application and technology news for environmental professionals. Kang Sun, 4th year Ph.D. student, David Miller, 5th year Ph.D…
Levi Staton, an undergraduate in Civil and Environmental Engineering and MIRTHE REU student working in our group during summer 2012 was awarded the best poster award at the MIRTHE Summer Workshop in Baltimore, MD. His poster was entitled "Development and Field Testing of an Open-Path 8 µm Quantum Cascade Laser Methane Sensor at Toolik Lake,…
Victor Fu, a high school student working in our group during summer 2012 was awarded for the most amusing poster flash presentation at the MIRTHE Summer Workshop in Baltimore, MD for his presentation, "Design of an 8 um Quantum Cascade Laser Sensor for Integrated Long Path Length Methane Monitoring." Congratulations, Victor!
Kang Sun, a third year Ph.D. student, has been awarded a NASA Earth and Space Science Graduate Fellowship on his project "Validation of TES Ammonia Using an Open-Path Quantum Cascade Laser Based Spectrometer." Atmospheric ammonia plays critical roles in the formation of unhealthy particulate matter, and Kang's high-resolution measurements will…
Minghui Diao, 4th year Ph.D. student, was awarded the 2012 Walbridge Fund Graduate Award. She was one of three students selected and receives funding to support her thesis work and field analyses of DC3/SEAC4RS. The Walbridge Fund Graduate Award provides research funding to one or more Princeton University graduate students pursuing innovative…
Dr. Amir Khan, postdoctoral researcher and David Miller, 4th year Ph.D. student, were featured in a CLEO press release "Portable Gas Sensors Improve Atmospheric Pollution Measurements" highlighting their work on compact, low-power, open-path, portable trace gas sensors for robotic helicopters and operation under various field environments. This…
David Miller, 4th year Ph.D. student, led the second field deployment of the MIRTHE SLIP project in collaboration with the Maryland Department of Environment at the Howard University-Beltsville atmospheric monitoring site. David is an investigator with a consortium of MIRTHE student and post-doc researchers who performed a suite of measurements…
Garnet Abrams, an undergraduate student conducting research on the tropical distribution of relative humidity, was featured in an article on the Princeton Environmental Institute (PEI) website on her recent successful AGU Fall Meeting talk. Garnet, who participated in the HIPPO field campaign during the summer 2010, used chemical tracers to…
David Miller, 4th year Ph.D. student, led the first field deployment of the MIRTHE SLIP project as part of the Baltimore Ecosystem Study. David is an investigator with a consortium of MIRTHE student and post-doc researchers who performed a suite of measurements relevant to the nitrogen, carbon, and water cycles at a field site on the UMBC…
Minghui Diao, 4th year Ph.D. student, was selected as one of six graduate students to join the Princeton Energy and Climate Scholars (PECS) this fall. PECS, now entering its fourth year, includes graduate students seeking Ph.D.'s from a wide range of departments across Princeton. As a PECS fellow, she receives funds for her research, conference…
Garnet Abrams, an undergraduate student conducting research on the water vapor measurements from the HIPPO field campaign, was awarded a Student Travel Grant to give a talk on the distribution of water vapor at the Fall AGU Meeting. Less than 0.5% of all oral presentations are given by undergraduate students at AGU. Congratulations, Garnet!
…Minghui flew from Christchurch, New Zealand, to inside the Antarctic Circle and back on the NSF Gulfstream-V research aircraft to study ice supersaturation in the polar wintertime. She was one of eight scientists onboard the aircraft as part of the fifth and final deployment of the NSF HIAPER Pole-to-Pole Observations field experiment.
Garnet, a summer undergraduate and current senior thesis student, flew onboard the NSF Gulfstream-V research aircraft to analyze ice supersaturation over the Arctic. She was one of eight scientists who flew from Anchorage, Alaska, to 85 degrees North and back, porpoising from the stratosphere to 500 feet above the broken sea ice. She was part…