Miguel Hilario Wins AGU Outstanding Graduate Presentation Award

Congratulations to Miguel Hilario who recently received an Outstanding Graduate Presentation Award from the American Geophysical Union for his poster presentation at the AGU's December 2021 meeting. This highly competitive award is made only for the most exceptional graduate presenters at the annual fall conference.

Miguel presented a poster titled "Particulate Oxalate-to-Sulfate Ratio as an Aqueous Processing Marker: Consistency Across Field Campaigns and Limitations." His group's project is focused on leveraging aerosol data from multiple airborne and surface-based field campaigns encompassing diverse environmental conditions. They have identified a generally consistent oxalate-sulfate mass ratio, with a median of 0.0217 (95% confidence interval: 0.0154 – 0.0296; r = 0.76). Ground-based aerosol data has shown that the median oxalate-sulfate ratio is robust within both the mixed layer and the submicrometer particle size range, with higher values observed for supermicrometer particles. They demonstrated that dust and biomass burning emissions could separately bias this ratio towards higher values by at least one order of magnitude. Since sulfate is more readily measured, this ratio could be used to infer oxalate from sulfate in the absence of biomass burning and/or air masses rich with coarse aerosol types (especially dust). This ratio may also have implications for model estimates of secondary organic aerosol (SOA) formation, and particularly the aqueous processing route for oxalate production.

We extend our warmest congratulations to Miguel and his faculty advisor, Joint Professor Armin Sorooshian.