Yuan Gao

Field Specialization:  Atmospheric Chemistry

Dr. Gao’s research interests are in the fields of atmospheric aerosols, air-sea chemical exchange, and air pollution. The goals of her research are to understand the processes affecting the global atmospheric composition and its impact on climate change, biogeochemical cycles, and the quality of the human environment. Her research has spanned many regions, from the Asian coast to the US East Coast, and from the Arctic to the Southern Ocean and Antarctica. Dr. Gao applies interdisciplinary approaches combining field measurements, laboratory experiments, and numerical modeling to characterize the properties of atmospheric substances and processes affecting their properties to better understand the land-atmosphere-ocean interactions. Her current research projects focus on the near and far, from examining how urban air quality impacts human health around the metropolitan areas of New York City-Newark in New Jersey to studying the atmospheric dust and iron deposition to the Arctic Ocean, Southern Ocean, and Antarctica. The Gao group recently collected and has been analyzing observational data to address the impact of Covid-19 on air quality in New Jersey.