Miguel Hilario Honored with the HAS Graduate Scholarship Award

Congratulations to Miguel Hilario who was selected as the HAS Department's Outstanding Graduate Student in Scholarship for 2024. Miguel was recognized at the College of Science Graduate Student Awards Ceremony on April 16, 2024.

Miguel is a HAS doctoral student whose research will help us understand more about the removal of atmospheric aerosol in a tropical marine environment. His dissertation advisor and nominating faculty member is HAS Joint Professor Armin Sorooshian. 

In his dissertation, Miguel explained that "Aerosols remain the largest source of uncertainty in our understanding of the atmosphere and climate. A major factor in this uncertainty is the wet scavenging (removal) of aerosols in global-scale models, which negatively impacts model capabilities to capture aerosol lifetimes and, consequently, the interactions of aerosols with clouds, precipitation, and radiation."

He hopes that his work will help to alleviate these problems through the use of:

• A ground-based study investigating factors contributing to the inter-seasonal persistence of aerosol concentrations in a tropical coastal megacity despite higher precipitation during the wet season
• A multi-tool study using aircraft data that determines meteorological variables relevant for scavenging during long-range transport
• An aircraft-based study calculating in-cloud scavenging efficiencies of multiple aerosol species in tropical convection

With this work, he hopes to identify a mechanism through which aerosol concentrations can be sustained during the rainy season, which should be investigated in other developing megacities due to the public health risks associated with pollutant accumulation. His work will also provide suggestions for meteorological variables that could be implemented into model parametrizations of aerosol scavenging.

Congratulations, Miguel!