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After receiving a B.A. in Chemistry from Willamette University in 1993, Wilson took a research assistant position at Los Alamos National Laboratory where he studied the chemistry of polar stratospheric ice clouds using nonlinear optics. During this time, he also received a M.A. degree in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College in Santa Fe, NM. He then earned a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry in 2003 from the University of California, Berkeley. His doctoral work focused on probing liquid surfaces using synchrotron radiation at the Advanced Light Source (ALS), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). In 2003 he received a Fredrick Reines Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship from Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he began developing novel instrumentation for the sensitive detection of atmospheric particles. In 2004 he returned to LBNL as a limited term scientist at the Chemical Dynamics Beamline (ALS). Currently, he is a senior scientist and the Deputy Director of the Chemical Sciences Division at LBNL. In 2012 Wilson won an Early Career Award from the Office of Science (DOE), enabling his research group to focus on understanding the fundamental reaction mechanisms of organic molecules at liquid water interfaces. Wilson’s other research interests include soot formation chemistry, low temperature gas phase reactions in planetary atmospheres and the heterogeneous atmospheric chemistry of organic aerosols.
Google Scholar
Google Scholar
Current Research Group
Current Research Group
Research Group (2023): (left to right) Brandon Wallace (joint wiht A. Ajoy), Emily Brown, Alex Prophet, PK Kim (joint with M. Ahmed), Lexi Deal, Ryan Reynolds, Liron Cohen (joint with D. Limmer), Madison Foreman (joint with D. Neumark)
Ryan Reynolds
Ryan Reynolds
Graduate Student
Graduate Student
I am a graduate student in physical chemistry at UC Berkeley interested in the kinetics of heterogeneous oxidation, especially in sub-micron organic particles with restricted diffusion of reactants. I completed my Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry with a minor in Mathematics at Biola University, where I studied the coupled oxidation and photochemistry of thin films of pesticides using ATR-FTIR spectroscopy. In the Wilson group, my research will include both experimental study of the oxidation of organic particles with VUV aerosol mass spectrometry and computer simulation of oxidation kinetics with Kinetiscope software, to understand how the mechanisms of oxidation change under varying conditions.
Liron Cohen
Liron Cohen
Graduate Student
Graduate Student
(joint with David Limmer)
(joint with David Limmer)
I am a physical chemistry graduate student at UC Berkeley interested in probing the surface of aerosols to track chemical changes and pathways in environmentally relevant conditions. I have recently completed my Bachelor’s degree in chemistry at the University of Toronto working with Jamie Donaldson on coupling acoustic levitation and UV-Vis absorbance to measure the pH in-situ of ~1mm droplets. In the Wilson group, I will continue working on single-droplet systems using different trapping methods and spectroscopic techniques. I will examine the chemical make-up of droplets as they undergo reactions to gain fundamental insight into the processes governing heterogeneous reactions.
Alex Prophet
Alex Prophet
Postdoc
Postdoc
I am currently a Postdoc studying physical chemistry, having recently completed a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and mathematics at St. Olaf College in 2018 and a PhD from UC Berkeley. My research interests include the study of chemical reactions occurring at the liquid-air interface, and the behavior, composition, and reactivity of atmospheric aerosols. I would like to address these interests by using a combination of surface and bulk sensitive techniques such as X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy. In addition, the use of simulation and theoretical descriptions of interfacial dynamics will be critical in describing how observations of surface phenomena can be interpreted on both molecular and macroscopic scales.
Emily Brown
Emily Brown
Graduate Student
Graduate Student
I am a graduate student studying physical chemistry at UC Berkeley. I am interested in investigating the importance of the liquid-air interface to the kinetics of heterogeneous reactions in aerosol and droplet systems. As part of the Wilson group I will be able to study droplet systems experimentally in a quadruple electrodynamic trap, and also perform theoretical studies using Kinetiscope. I completed my bachelor’s degree in chemistry at Centre College in Kentucky in 2020 where I studied catalysts for the decomposition of lignin in an inorganic chemistry group led by Dr. Karin Young.
I am a postdoc in Berkeley Lab working with Dr. Kevin Wilson and Musa Ahmed. I am interested in chemical reactions in aerosols which can be accelerated compared to bulk solutions. I will be mainly using mass spectrometry with different ionization methods (VUV, APCI, and ESI) along with X-ray spectroscopy (XPS, NEXAFS, and resonant SAXS) to address the fundamental question in aerosol chemistry: why are they different from bulk reaction? I obtained my PhD from Continetti group in UC San Diego working on reactions of single levitated droplets probed by Raman spectroscopy. By working with Kevin and Musa, I want to investigate chemical kinetics of aqueous/organic aerosols, and provide fundamental insights about the oddity of aerosol chemistry.
I am a postdoc at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley working with Kevin Wilson and Dan Neumark. I earned my PhD at CU Boulder in the lab of Mathias Weber, where I studied metal-ligand interactions by performing cryogenic ion vibrational spectroscopy (CIVS) on coordination complexes. Currently, I am investigating the dynamics of heterogeneous reactions that occur between gas particles and aqueous liquid surfaces. My experiments consist of scattering a molecular beam from a flat liquid jet and collecting time-of-flight spectra of scattered particles and reaction products. With this technique, detailed information about surface trapping processes, reaction probabilities, and energy transfer between molecules can be connected to parameters that influence multiphase chemistry in the atmosphere.
Dr. Lexi Deal
Dr. Lexi Deal
Postdoc
Postdoc
I am a postdoc at Berkeley Lab, working with Kevin Wilson to study multiphase chemistry using levitated aqueous microdroplets. I completed my PhD at CU Boulder in May, 2023, where I worked with Veronica Vaida, studying environmentally relevant air-water interfaces, primarily via infrared reflection-absorption spectroscopy. The air-water interface is a unique reaction environment, and chemistry involving aqueous microdroplets (which have a high surface area to volume ratio) is likely much different than similar chemistry in bulk environments. Now, I am using the levitated droplets with mass spectrometric analysis and stochastic kinetics models to explore the role of the interface during ozonolysis reactions as a function of the surface-activity of its aqueous phase reaction counterpart.
I am a post doc at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley working with Kevin Wilson and Ashok Ajoy. My work in the Wilson group focuses on studying kinetics of chemical reactions in micron-sized emulsions. This is achieved using a combination of microfluidics, optical trapping and Raman spectroscopy. With this methodology, we intend to explore many fundamental questions regarding chemistry in microcompartments, including the effect of the oil-water interface on reaction acceleration relative to bulk reactors and how different (or similar) reactions can occur between the often-studied air-water interface and the oil-water interface. Before joining the Wilson and Ajoy groups, I completed my PhD at McGill University under the supervision of Thomas Preston. During my PhD work, I investigated various microphysical properties of suspended single-aerosol particles, such as mass transport and pH.
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