Sonia Kreidenweis

When Sonia Kreidenweis was pursuing a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering, she conducted research with two professors who worked on air pollution problems.

“I was excited to learn how my degree could be applied to understanding and helping improve the air we breathe and decided to pursue this topic in graduate school,” she says.

Now, Kreidenweis is a professor of environmental engineering in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, part of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University. She is also the Fulton Chair of aerosol science.

“ASU’s reputation for innovation and interdisciplinary scholarship drew me to the university,” she says. “I’m excited about the opportunity to work with ASU colleagues on air quality and other environmental challenges specific to Arizona and the western United States.”

Before joining the Fulton Schools, Kreidenweis was a University Distinguished Professor of atmospheric science and a co-founder of the atmospheric chemistry program within the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University.

“It was one of the first chemistry programs to be housed in an atmospheric science department,” she says. “Early on, we included atmospheric chemistry in our required core curriculum, signaling its now well-recognized importance to the field.”

Previously, Kreidenweis was an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering at San José State University and served as a consultant on aerosol and chemical interactions in the atmosphere at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Her expertise is in air pollution, aerosol science, atmospheric chemistry and aerosol-cloud interactions. Currently, her work focuses on the aerobiome ­— the biological particles in the air, including pollen, bacteria, fungi and more.

“They can play key roles in human, animal and environmental health, yet we don’t know enough about their atmospheric life cycles to confidently predict their abundances and interactions,” she says.

Kreidenweis will teach environmental engineering courses at ASU, including a new course on aerosol physics and chemistry.

She hopes her students see how many questions remain about the interconnectedness of the Earth’s systems, experience the joy of discovery and understand how rewarding it is to advance knowledge.

Outside the classroom, Kreidenweis is interested in the intersection of the arts and STEM. Previously, she served on the board of a nonprofit that started music programs for children and an annual music festival.

Written by Lisa Irish