I am a Research Scientist III in the Kreidenweis/DeMott group at Colorado State University. My work is centralized on specks of material in the air called "aerosols" from sources like the ocean, soil, plants, and fires. The main focus of my research is how some of these aerosols have unique properties that allow them to help ice form in clouds. These aerosols are called "ice nucleating particles" or "INPs". Most clouds are composed of a mixture of tiny liquid drops and ice crystals. Without INPs, ice would not be able to form in clouds above about -40 °F. 

Most of my research on INPs — how many there are in the air, what they are, and the sources they come from — is focused in the Arctic and Antarctic, but I also travel to high alpine locations as in the California Sierra Nevada Mountains, Colorado Rockies, and Swiss Alps for my measurements.