ESWN Member Tami Bond Named a MacArthur Fellow

Long-time ESWN Member Tami Bond has been awarded the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship. MacArthur fellows are “talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction”(MacArthur Foundation).

Tami is an environmental engineer and professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research is aimed at understanding the effects of black carbon emissions on human health and climate. Black carbon is created whenever something is burned, but emissions vary considerably by source. Tami works at the interface between energy consumption and global atmospheric chemistry and measures black carbon’s physical, chemical, and optical properties. She was selected by the MacArthur Foundation in part because her studies have indicated that “global black carbon emissions are one of the most important contributions to anthropogenic climate change.” She translates her research to be more suitable for policy application, and is helping millions around the world breathe cleaner air.

According to Tami, while in grad school, she “wanted to know about the entire lifetime of combustion products, which begin in the heart of the flame, proceed through the tailpipe (or exhaust stack), waft into the atmosphere, interact with other chemicals or with solar radiation, and eventually get changed into another chemical or get stuck on raindrops, the earth, trees, lungs.” This interest in the entire cycle led Tami to receive an Interdisciplinary Ph.D. from the University of Washington with advisors from the departments of Civil Engineering, Atmospheric Sciences, and Mechanical Engineering. Tami’s sister, Robin Schneider, (also an ESWN member, and one of 7 siblings) thinks that “Tami’s interdisciplinary Ph.D. is a sign of her genius – she inherently understands connections without arbitrary limitations imposed by others/academia.” Tami is a passionate scientist, and we are proud that she is a long-time ESWN member.

You can read more about Tami’s work here and visit her website here.