the Bates lab

Welcome

to the Bates Lab @ CU Boulder Mechanical & Environmental Engineering! We use a variety of scientific techniques to study the chemical processes by which organic molecules in the atmosphere contribute to air pollution and affect human health & earth's climate. Here you can learn more about our lab members and our research or browse our recent publications and presentations. We're actively recruiting motivated students & researchers – if you're interested in joining the lab as a graduate student, undergraduate, or postdoc, please reach out!

News

7/14/26 - new co-authored paper alert! Another one from the CHANEL campaign - this one by Yuwei Wang @ U. Manchester describes a novel calibration technique for multi-reagent chemical ionization mass spectrometers

6/17/26 - new co-authored paper alert! Farhan Nursanto @ Wageningen Univ. investigated the formation @ fates of urban organic nitrates using data from the CHANEL experimental campaign that our group helped with in 2024 at the SAPHIR environmental chamber in Jülich, Germany.

6/16/26 - it's a big milestone for our group today - our first PhD defense! Huge congrats to now-Dr. Andre Schaum! He'll be wrapping up projects here for the rest of the month and then moving back to the Twin Cities to work at the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.

6/8/26 - three of us are making the biennial pilgrimage to St. Louis this week to present our group's research at the 12th International GEOS-Chem Conference.

5/28/26 - new co-authored paper alert (busy month for these co-authorships)! For this one, Alli Moon @ UW used GEOS-Chem to quantify the impacts of heterogeneous iodine chemistry in the atmosphere on global abundances of oxidants and other halogen compounds.

5/27/26 - we're off to Houston to measure summertime air quality in Texas! Our new instrument will be deployed at a ground site in the city in collaboration with Texas A&M and the University of Houston, and we'll also help the NOAA CSL team to run a mass spectrometer aboard the P-3 aircraft for the TexAQS mission.

5/25/26 - new co-authored paper alert! In this one, Dr. Emily Lill @ CSU used AEROMMA data to quantify the impacts of Canadian wildfires in 2023 on atmospheric nitrogen over the US.

5/13/26 - new co-authored paper alert! Using data from the AEROMMA campaign, Dr. Mike Robinson @ NOAA CSL quantified the reactive fate of isoprene over major US cities.

5/2/26 - prof. Bates is off to Vienna, Austria, to present our group's research at the European Geophysical Union's annual conference!

4/22/26 - in the past week, two of our group members have passed their second-year Mechanical Engineering qualification exams - congrats Maria and Raphael!

4/17/26 - new co-authored paper alert! For this one, I helped Aoxing Zhang at SUSTech implement some updates to glyoxal chemistry in GEOS-Chem.

4/15/26 - today I'm up the road at CSU to deliver a seminar on our field measurements. Great to see all the exciting air quality work being done in Fort Collins!

4/6/26 - our chemical ionization mass spectrometer has been delivered! The group's very excited to test it out and deploy it to Houston TX later this summer. Thanks to the Karsa team for the training!

4/2/26 - today group member Nima Amiri passed his Mechanical Engineering Comprehensive Exam, the last hurdle before the defense - congrats Nima!

3/27/26 - this month I've visited my old stomping grounds of Cambridge MA and Seattle WA for invited seminars at MIT and UW - thanks to my hosts for some excellent visits!

2/27/26 - today group members Andre, Maria, and Raphael present their work at the second annual AQ Buffs student-led air quality symposium!

2/18/26 - new co-authored paper alert! Kelvin's odd-oxygen budgeting in GEOS-Chem also came in handy for this one: "Large and increasing stratospheric contribution to tropospheric ozone over East Asia" by Nadia Colombi (Harvard), out now in ACP.

2/16/26 - new co-authored paper alert! "Aerosol iodine recycling is a major control on tropospheric reactive iodine abundance" by Alli Moon (U. Washington), for which Kelvin helped with model interpretation and implementation of odd-oxygen budgeting, was just published in ACP.

1/1/26 - happy new year and welcome to the lab Dr. Emmaline Longnecker! Emmy will be helping to set up our new mass spectrometer and using it to investigate the chemistry of PFAS compounds in the air.

12/25/25 - Merry Christmas and happy new co-authored paper alert: "Wintertime Peroxyacetyl Nitrate (PAN) Hotspot over China Observed from Space: Interpretation of CrIS Results Using Updated GEOS-Chem" by Peng Zhang (SUSTech) was just published in ES&T Letters!

12/19/25 - congrats to group member Raphael Odai, whose collaboration with researchers from the University of Copenhagen studying the photolysis of organic sulfur compounds in the atmosphere was just published in J. Phys. Chem. A!

12/18/25 - check out this writeup on the indoor air quality measurement campaign we participate in last summer! The CLEAN Home campaign was a collaborative effort across CU's Mechanical Engineering, Environmental Engineering, & Chemistry departments, as well as the local NCAR lab, and our group member Andre helped run an iodide CIMS during the project.

12/17/25 - happy holidays from Honolulu, HI, where Kelvin is presenting our group's recent work characterizing the vaporization inlet for aerosols (VIA) at the Pacifichem conference.

11/30/25 - new co-authored paper alert: "Ammonia Observations Over Large North American Cities" by Emily Lill (Colorado State), which uses measurements of VOCs from the AEROMMA campaign that Kelvin helped collect, was just published in JGR-Atmos.

11/28/25 - new co-authored paper alert: "The global importance of gas-phase peroxy radical accretion reactions for secondary organic aerosol loading" by Alife Mayhew (U Utah) is out now in ACP. For this one, Kelvin helped with the implementation of new organic gas-phase oxidation mechanisms in GEOS-Chem.

11/27/25 - happy Thanksgiving and a big congrats to group member Andre Schaum on his newly published manuscript in Aerosol Research describing a novel method of coupling liquid chromatography to chemical ionization mass spectrometry for offline analysis of organic aerosol!

10/7/25 - huge thanks to Prof. Lelia Hawkins at Harvey Mudd for hosting Kelvin on a visit to the College's Hixon Climate Center! Today he'll guest lecture in a first-year chemistry course and then present a research seminar on "Changing Sources of Atmospheric Organics: Impacts from Local to Global Scales".

8/21/25 - happy first day of classes, and welcome to the lab Kate, Rodrigo, & Max! This semester Prof. Bates is teaching two courses: Climate Engineering and Chemistry for Energy & Material Science.

8/7/25 - new co-authored paper alert: "Atmospheric Evolution of Brown Carbon from Wildfires in North America" by Jhao-Hong Chen (WashU St. Louis) is out now in ES&T. This study uses observations of VOCs from the AEROMMA campaign that Kelvin helped collect.

8/5/25 - Kelvin is presenting today at the Gordon Research Conference on Atmospheric Chemistry (his favorite conference) in Sunday River, Maine -- "How Much Detail Is Enough? Model Mechanisms of Monoterpenes, Sesquiterpenes, and Cooking Aldehydes".

7/2/25 - that's a wrap! We've finished up a six-week deployment to Prof. Nina Vance's garage to measure indoor air quality. Kelvin & Andre got very good at cooking pasta and meat sauce by a strict recipe to investigate emissions of particles and gases in the kitchen.

7/1/25 - new co-authored paper alert! "Sources, Sinks, and Oxidation Pathways of Phenolic Compounds in South Korea Constrained Using KORUS-AQ Airborne Observations" by Stephen MacFarlane (U Wollongong) is out now in JGR-Atmos.

6/24/25 - new co-authored paper alert! "Ozone Production Efficiencies in the Three Largest United States Cities from Airborne Measurements" by Wyndom Chace (CU Boulder, Chemistry) is out now in ES&T! This study uses observations of VOCs from the AEROMMA campaign that Kelvin helped collect.

5/15/25 - we're all set up in Prof. Nina Vance's garage to measure indoor air quality as part of the CLEAN Home campaign this summer! Thanks to Dr. Qing Ye at NCAR for collaborating on the deployment of an iodide CIMS for this project.

5/1/25 - Prof. Bates won a teaching award! The "Best Should Teach" awards recognize CU faculty who "embody the beliefs, behaviors, and skills of exemplary teachers".

4/18/25 - congrats to the student organizers of the (first annual) AQ Buffs symposium for putting together an excellent day of air quality talks & posters!

4/10/25 - new co-authored paper alert! "Dimethyl sulfide chemistry over the industrial era: comparison of key oxidation mechanisms and long-term observations" by Ursula Jongebloed (U Washington) is out now in ACP.

3/27/25 - new co-authored paper alert! "Ethanol and Methanol in South Korea and China: Evidence for Large Anthropogenic Emissions Missing from Current Inventories" by Ellie Beaudry (Harvard) is out now in ES&T Air.

3/4/25 - new co-authored paper alert! "Assessment of Hydrogen's Climate Impact Is Affected by Model OH Biases" by Laura Yang (Harvard) is out now in GRL.

2/21/25 - new co-authored paper alert! "Advances in an OH reactivity instrument for airborne field measurements" is out now in AMT.

8/19/24 - It's the first day of school again - today I start my appointment as an assistant professor in CU's Mechanical Engineering Department!

7/14/24 - We're off on another round of field measurements, this time to Salt Lake City as part of NOAA's Utah Summer Ozone Study (USOS) Campaign. I'll be running the proton transfer reaction (PTR) mass spectrometer aboard our mobile lab as we drive around the Salt Lake Valley.

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