She finished off Dartmouth and went on to a graduate program in atmospheric and physical chemistry at the University of California at San Diego. She did her Ph.D. thesis work with Mark Thiemens. Mark was a postdoc years ago in Bob Clayton s lab here at Chicago. He worked on isotopic fractionation in gases. Her thesis project was measuring the three stable isotopes of oxygen in carbon monoxide, with the idea of being able to identify the sources of this gas in the troposphere.
Carbon monoxide can be deadly in more ways than the usual one.
It is a principle molecule in the reactions that form smog. A carbon monoxide molecule in the lower atmosphere has a lifetime of from one to three months. During that time it can enter into reactions that produce ugly air conditions. Carbon monoxide is produced by many human activities, as well as by some natural ones. The object of her work was to isotopically characterize the different sources of carbon monoxide in order to distinguish the several sources.