We are recruiting new PhD students through the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Aerosol Science to further develop our new single droplet mass spectrometry approach and to explore chemical reactions in aerosol droplets. More information on these studentships is available here!

We welcome Mehdi Abou Hamad, who joins our group as a PhD student. Mehdi did his undergraduate and masters work at American University in Beirut. He will be investigating the surface properties of aerosol droplets. Welcome, Mehdi!

Congratulations to Alison, Lara, and Nathan on their paper exploring the dynamic surface tension of picolitre volume droplets just published in JACS!

Congratulations to Josh who has successfully passed his viva!

Alison's paper demonstrating that surface-area-to-volume ratio can become more important than surfactant properties in controlling the surface tensions of aerosol droplets was just published in ACS Central Science! The article is accompanied by a "First Reactions" commentary!

Our paper quantifying the filtration efficiency of surgical face masks is published in Aerosol Science and Technology. Congratulations to Ala, who led on this project!

We welcome new PhD student Nathan Croll Dawes and new postdoctoral researcher Tony Kao into the group!

Bryan is awarded the Marlow Prize from the Royal Society of Chemistry! This prize recognizes his contributions to aerosol physical chemistry, including the surface composition of microscopic droplets, new particle formation in the atmosphere, and the physicochemical properties of respiratory aerosols.

Jim wins an award recognizing his teaching efforts from the Bristol Institute for Learning and Teaching!

Lara becomes the first student to pass her viva in the Bzdek Group! Congratulations, Lara!

Our paper on resporatory droplet emissions, a project led by Josh, has been published in Aerosol Science and Technology! This paper shows that oral articulation drives generation of the largest respiratory droplets.

Alison won a highly competitive Aerosol Science Career Development Grant from the UK and Ireland Aerosol Society. The grant will enable her to explore the surface tensions of sub-picolitre droplets. Congratulations, Alison!

Bryan had a string of good news this month. He was awarded the inaugural Juan de la Mora Prize from the American Association of Aerosol Research. This prize provides our group with a high resolution half-mini nano-differential mobility analyzer that will allow manipulation of aerosols in the 1-30 nm size range. In addition, Bryan was awarded the prestigious Philip Leverhulme Prize. The prize funds will be used to catalyze a new collaborative project exploring photochemistry in droplets on ultrafast timescales.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have been spending several weeks working with professional singers and musicians in London to quantify aerosol emission during singing, speaking, and breathing. The work got picked up in the news media. Click here to read more about the study!

Bryan was interviewed for Big Picture Science, a public radio show produced at the SETI Institute in California, about aerosol transmission of SARS-CoV-2. You can listen to the show here!