An undergraduate researcher in environmental engineering says she wants to do more in-depth analysis on air quality near Windsor Airport after her preliminary work won an award at an international conference.~

Jingmiao Shi learned last week that her data analysis of air quality monitoring stations near the airport took first place in the undergraduate category at the Air & Waste Management Association conference at the Cobo Centre June 16 to 19 in Detroit.

“I wasn’t expecting it,” said Shi, who assumed she hadn’t won, since the conference ended a month ago. “I couldn’t believe it.”

Shi analysed the results from five air quality monitoring stations that recorded data on aerosol black carbon and carbon-monoxide levels over a 20-day period in November of 2007. The stations were located at the airport terminal, near the major runway, near the plane taxiing route, near the boundaries of the airport, as well as one at a South Windsor residence about 10 kilometres away.

Surprisingly, results showed that levels were higher at the residential site than those at the airport, but Shi said the home is located near a busy intersection and changes in wind patterns may have played a significant role in the data collected at the airport.

Shi is currently engaged in a summer co-op placement at Research In Motion in Waterloo, where she is helping to develop emergency preparedness plans as an environmental health and safety analyst. She hopes to do more research that will get more accurate recordings to account for wind direction, humidity, temperature and other meteorological factors when she returns to UWindsor in January for her fourth year of studies in January.

"I was so happy for her to win this award," said Iris Xu, Shi's academic advisor. "She did such a great job and got lots of wonderful experience."



Courtesy of the Daily News
Monday, July 20, 2009