Making Low-Cost Air Pollution Monitoring Available to All Communities

Yo Ng, whose game-changing research found that low-cost, portable air monitoring devices can be used to closely monitor ozone levels in the air, was invited to present her findings in April to members of Congress and their staff at the prestigious 23rd Annual Posters on the Hill in Washington D.C.

Ng’s project "Evaluating the Long-Term Performance of Low-Cost Portable Ozone Monitors as Supplementary Air Monitoring Methods for Rural and Financially-Disadvantaged Communities" was one of just 60 students from among 350 applications from around the country to share their research on Capitol Hill. The program is hosted by the Council on Undergraduate Research whose mission is to support and promote high-quality undergraduate student-faculty collaborative research and scholarship

"It is important for legislators and the public to know about our research because air pollution has a huge impact on environmental and human health," says Ng `19. "This project was the first to study the long-term performance, operating costs and benefits of low-cost ozone monitors. Our results showed that these monitors offer good data quality with substantially lower costs and can be used to supplement the current air monitoring network to benefit rural and financially-disadvantaged communities."

Ng has always cared about the environment and when she sought research with the chemistry faculty, she hoped her work could make a positive environmental impact. She talked with Chong Qiu, Ph.D., assistant professor of chemistry, who this year won a five-year, nearly $700,000 National Science Foundation Early Career Award for his groundbreaking research on aerosols in the atmosphere.

"Exposure to elevated ground-level ozone could trigger or worsen health conditions such as asthma and bronchitis."Yo Ng '19

"I was very intrigued by Dr. Qiu’s projects related to air quality and the environmental impact of aerosol, particularly the field measurements with portable air monitoring devices, because it has the potential to make a difference in our everyday lives," she says

Awarded a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship, she began collaborating with Dr. Qiu on the project in 2017, in the summer of 2018 and throughout the school year, measuring ground level ozone levels in New Haven. "Exposure to elevated ground-level ozone could trigger or worsen health conditions such as asthma and bronchitis," Ng explains. "Ground-level ozone, which is continuously monitored nationwide by air monitoring sites using federal reference methods, serves as an indicator of air quality because increased emissions of other air pollutants often lead to higher ozone concentrations."

After graduating in May, Ng will begin work at iBio CDMO in College Station, Texas, a company that specializes in using transient expression in plants to develop antibodies, biotherapeutics and vaccines and she says she’ll use the skills she’s developed doing undergraduate research.

"It has been a great honor working with Dr. Qiu over the past three years. He is very talented with many interdisciplinary projects that provide students with hands-on experience on research methodology," Ng says. "I am also appreciative of the funding and support from the SURF program, the department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, especially Dr. John Osambo, for being supportive of the idea of implementing these portable devices into the Environmental Chemistry course and Dean Harichandran who has supported Dr. Qiu’s research program I am part of.