Specialty: Soil Chemistry

It is critical to understand the properties and reactivity of minerals in order to better predict contaminant fate in the environment. My research is focused on understanding the mechanisms and kinetics of chemical reactions at the surfaces of soil minerals, especially nano-sized, poorly crystalline minerals (e.g. iron and manganese oxides). These minerals are unique in that they tend to exhibit disproportionately high reactivity in soils and can play a primary role in many sorption, desorption, and redox reactions in the environment. I utilize state of the art spectroscopic techniques (e.g. synchrotron based X-ray and infrared spectroscopies, FTIR spectromicroscopy, and Raman spectroscopy) to study these chemical reactions at the atomic scale. By coupling classical chemical techniques with state of the art spectroscopic techniques, my research aims elucidate chemical processes at multiple spatial and temporal scales which can help lead to better predictions of contaminant fate in the environment