Recap of Summer/Fall 2023!

Allegedly summer has been known as the best season in Illinois (or in the entire Midwest). Given the dynamic weather here, I would argue the transition period between summer and fall is one of the most enjoyable. Let’s see why with what our chapter has done throughout the time.

Ganesh, Tessa, and Manho had our exhibition at Science Outreach at the Urbana farmers market on July 8. This was a part of the Department of Atmospheric Science’s outreach event, and we appreciate them including us. We delivered what we have been studying and working on to the people of this community and reminded the importance of scientific communication. Attendees were really interested to learn more about air quality, in light of the recent wildfire smoke days in the Midwest from the Canadian wildfires.

Our Membership Director Tessa won the Policy & Research Legislative Fellowship! Congratulations, Tessa! She will work with State Representative Mike Marron to promote accessibility to renewable energy and identify potential challenges that could alleviated through updates to legislation or policy.

Since the Fall semester began, we resumed our writing session and journal club. We have been sharing the writing progress, thoughts, and feedback in the writing session. Yicen and Manho are working on preliminary exam proposal writing. Fingers crossed!

On 22nd September, Tessa hosted a video watch session in lieu of our journal club. We watched the phenomenal documentary video based on the book “Merchants of Doubt” authored by Naomi Oreskes. Later Dr. Naomi Oreskes visited C-U for her plenary lecture at the Midwest Student Conference on Atmospheric Research and the author event at the Literary book bar. Some of our members had a chance to meet her in person and learn a lot from her.

In the first week of October, members attended AAAR conferences and had their presentations. Our Vice President Erin got the student presentation award, kudos to Erin!

Aerosol Research Lab shared us with their group photo at the AAAR conference. From left to right, Tahsina, Ganesh, Dr. Verma, and Sudheer.

In November, Hope passed her qualifying exam and Manho passed his Ph.D. preliminary exam. Congratulations Hope and Manho!