Scripps Institution's Lynn Russell Honored for Research Achievements

Scripps Institution of Oceanography's Lynn Russell has received the Kenneth T. Whitby Award from the American Association for Aerosol Research (AAAR).

The award recognizes outstanding technical contributions to aerosol science and technology by a young scientist. It memorializes the work of Ken Whitby, who made groundbreaking contributions at the University of Minnesota's Particle Technology Laboratory to aerosol measurement, the study of aerosol properties and behavior, and the nature of atmospheric aerosols.

Russell's work has focused on understanding the chemical and physical behavior of atmospheric particles through innovative measurements and numerical modeling, including the development of techniques for better quantifying organic compounds in atmospheric particles.

Russell "has already made exceptional contributions to our understanding of atmospheric aerosols... [She] has produced a rare combination of fundamental advances at both the experimental and theoretical level," noted a Whitby Award nominator.

"Lynn Russell is one of the most talented and accomplished scientists that I have been privileged to know," said another nominator. "Her contributions are not only impressive in their number for someone at this early point in her career, they also have an astonishing breadth, spanning modeling, innovative instrumentation, and analytical method development and application."

Russell recently joined the faculty at the Center for Atmospheric Sciences at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.

She received her B.S. in chemical engineering and A.B. in international relations at Stanford University. She completed M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in chemical
engineering at the California Institute of Technology.

In 1996 she received an Advanced Studies Program Fellowship for research at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and developed interests in a number of topics relating to the evolution of atmospheric aerosols, including boundary layer meteorology, cloud-aerosol interactions, and sea salt particles. For this work, she received the NCAR Outstanding Paper Award in 1999.

Her work has been recognized through awards from the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation.

Recently she began developing a technique for identifying organic functional groups on single particles using soft X-ray spectromicroscopy and has initiated work on the connections between pollution particles and precipitation with funding from a James S. McDonnell 21st Century Science Research Award.

Russell and other AAAR award winners were recently honored during the 22nd annual AAAR conference in Anaheim, Calif.

AAAR is a nonprofit professional organization for scientists and engineers who wish to promote and communicate technical advances in the field of aerosol research. The association fosters the exchange of information among members and with other disciplines through conferences, symposia and publication of a professional journal, Aerosol Science and Technology.