ARL Postdoc Fellowship
ARL Postdoc Fellowship

Computational and Information Sciences Directorate Research Areas

Atmospheric Aerosols

Advisor: RG Pinnick
Adelphi, Maryland

Key words: aerosol measurement, light scattering from aerosols, bioaerosol detection

The goal of this research is to develop rapid methods for detecting and characterizing aerosols, particularly biological agents and pollutants. This is a challenging goal because we are trying to analyze large numbers of microparticles that each contains less than a picogram of material.

Current attention focuses on measurement of the intrinsic fluorescence and two-dimensional elastic scattering of biological aerosols to detect and classify them. Available instrumentation includes:

  • a flashlamp-pumped Nd:YLF laser with doubler, trippler, and quadrupler.
  • a diode-pumped Nd:YAG laser with doubler and quadrupler.
  • a variety of cw lasers, CCD and ICCD detectors.
  • aerosol generation equipment.
  • optical and electrodynamic particle levitation apparatus.
  • a number of commercial aerosol counters and samplers.