My current research
It’s been a while that I have checked through pages looking for obsolete content, updates,… but now I have brought my CV and publication list up to date (including the downloadable pdf- files). The changes already reflect my new job, which I am about to start in mid-August.
I have made some minor changes to the other pages as well and updated the blog software to WordPress 2.2. Working well so far.
I have already moved my stuff to Concordia, now that I have received the formal offer from the Dean’s office. It is a limited term appointment at “Assistant Professor†level, which is not bad and a significant improvement with regard to salary and benefits.
I will teach 3 courses each in the fall and winter terms, analytical chemistry for the most part and I am excited at the prospect of teaching full time for at least a while.Preparations have to start well before I officially take my new position, because I would not be ready otherwise.
I mostly work from home now, which gives me quite a bit of flexibility for the preparations that I need to do as a future dad ;). I make good progress, though, with my articles.
My contract has expired due to a shortage of funds of my advisor. At the moment I wait for my daughter to be born and I will then be on parental leave until mid-August, when I will start working at Concordia University.
However, I continue writing the articles that need to be finished – one on my snow sampling campaign in Tremblant and Mont-Saint-Hilaire and (at least) one reporting my results from my field trip to the Arctic. For the former I have calculated nice back-trajectories to determine the source region of the air that passed over the area prior to sampling in order to get an idea of the origin of VOC that I have identified and quantified in the snow pack using the NOAA HYSPLIT model.
I have just been to busy during my stay in Vienna and also the weeks after my return were full of interesting events, so I have to catch up once more. Any posts from April 8 until today are postdated, anyway it should be an interesting read, because there are lots of news.
Otherwise I am busy with structuring and writing my Alert manuscript. A rough structure is done and I start replacing the bulleted lists with actual paragraphs. I have also completed a list of figures and tables that I would like to include, which usually helps me to focus on the important issues that I want to present. Things are coming along …
With my teaching job at Concordia finished at the end of April, my supervisor at McGill told me that she had some money left to employ me during May, which I find extremely kind of her. I currently finish a manuscript on a field campaign that I have conducted in South-Western Quebec; one in a National park in in the Laurentians, a 2-hour drive north of Montreal, and one in a nature reserve 1 hour east of Montreal, 2 quite different environments with regard to closeness to the city, altitude and vegetation.
I have been working on this manuscript for a while and rewritten large parts of it in order to make is less descriptive and more focused concerning the results and their interpretation; I was able to add a few aspects that came up during discussions at EGU last April as well, so in the end I hope for a good quality manuscript.
I have also started writing up the results from the Alert field campaign. After several talks, posters and discussions on an international level, I am very confident about my data and the results that I have obtained. With all the suggestions and ideas that I have received I have a very clear idea, where this manuscript will go.
I was my first EGU meeting here in Vienna (finally – after 3 years abroad I make it to a conference in my home town 😉 and my impressions were mixed.
Organisation was excellent – no problems with registration. A weekly pass for public transport was part of the registration and the venue at the Austria Centre Vienna was pleasant. No “big†book of abstracts was published this year, so I had to put a programme together in advance (or at one of the many terminals onsite), which was a good thing, because I was very well prepared once the conference started, knowing each and every session I would attend. Browsing through the programme on a computer screen is still a pain, though, if you just want to know, what is going on.Â
I presented a poster and was pleasantly surprised that I had a couple of minutes during the oral session to talk about my work. I had even more time than originally allocated, because most poster presenters did not show up and so I had a little mini-presentation to get people interested. This paid off and I had a very good attendance at the poster right after the oral sessions with good discussions.
Quality of the contributions was so-so, especially at the oral sessions (bad posters are more easily by-passed). I sat through some incredibly bad presentations, not formally, but also content-wise, where speakers presented very unreliable data; discussions that I had afterwards did not elucidate the situation, but rather convince me that the methods used were indeed unreliable. While I acknowledge that the quality of a presentation is difficult to judge from an abstract, I was still surprised at the number of these contributions.
Overall though, I had a very positive impression of the meeting. People attending were mostly Europeans, so after 3 AGU meetings it was good to get an overview of European research in my own field of work. I have met two research groups, who do similar work than I do – VOC determination in snow and it was good to exchange ideas and approaches. VOC speciation in snow is still not pursued by a lot of people – lots of work for me to do. I always find conferences very stimulating, so I also found the time to work a little on my current manuscript and incorporate some of the thoughts that came up during the meeting.
Today’s visit was extremely interesting – especially the microbiology aspect of it. It is not my central field of work, but I have done quite a bit of work concerning isolation and identification of bacteria and fungi from snow. Their (potential) ability to metabolise the VOC that I am trying to determine presents an interesting pathway for their fate in the environment. Snow with its huge surface and favourable properties (especially during the time of snow melt) could provide an suitable matrix for the breakdown of VOC by microbial species.
The group in Vienna works mostly on the role of fungi in the snow pack in conjunction with the determination of organic matter, mostly as a sum parameter – not the speciation work that I do. It was most interesting to hear about the methodolgy that they use and how they interpret their results.
The first 10 days in Vienna are over and I have already given two talks – both went very well. Apart from that I will be visiting the Vienna University of Technology once more next Tuesday for some more exchanges concerning atmospheric chemistry research and I am very much looking forward to it.
I have also finished my poster for EGU starting in a week – all there is left is printing the poster. I have found a cheap place to print, so no major obstacles a head. No wait … I still need to sit down and put a detailed schedule together. With 3 AGU meetings under my belt it should not be too difficult. Loads of interesting stuff though – I have to be careful, what I choose and what will be left out.
I am also in touch with quite a few students concerning the lecture. The final is coming up (shortly after my return) and I currently answer questions by email before some additional office hours a few days before the exam. So far I can keep up and I answer questions within 24 hours.
… and it probably shows, how busy I have been in the past week & months. So I will fill up the space with new impressions and backdate things a little as well – I will reflect a bit on the things I’ve done.
Anyway, I just arrived in Austria (yesterday) and I already gave a seminar at the Vienna University of Technology – very pleasant, very enjoyable. I was asked to give the talk in English – better for me anyway, because I rarely speak about my work in German. More presentations to come and I will also participate in the European Geosciences Union at the Austria Center in Vienna in mid-April.
On the side I support students by email and answer their questions, trying to help them with their preparations for the final exam. Things are not too busy yet, so I can concentrate on my presentations.
I have just received a networking grant for two trips (to Vienna, Austria and St. John’s, Newfoundland) in order to visit two atmospheric chemistry research groups.Â
Both groups – at Memorial University and the Vienna University of Technology – do fascinating research in the area of bioaerosols, development of monitoring methods and atmosphere – ocean interactions, fields very close or adjacent to my own, which deals with the exchange of volatile organic compounds between snow and the atmosphere. I expect valuable input from both visits and I have also offered to present some of my own work.
For $ 2500.- I will also be able to attend conferences in my field of research. The grant is provided by the Global Environmental Change Centre (<a href=â€http://www.mcgill.ca/gec3â€>GEC3</a>) at McGill University and I am quite happy that I will be able to make those trips.