Born, raised and educated in Seoul, South Korea, Dr. Myoseon Jang’s life has been as bustling as the city she’s from.
Though here at the University of Florida we are familiar with her research in air pollution, that isn’t the area she got started in. After completing her bachelor’s degree in chemistry at Ewha Womens University, she attended Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and got her master’s degree in polymer chemistry. For several years after she worked as a researcher in polymer and petroleum chemicals, though her mind always wandered back to her true passion: the environment.
In the 1980s, while Dr. Jang was attending school, South Korea was seeing a new age of environmental movements. Local groups throughout the region were forming under anti-pollution objectives, including students. Dr. Jang was part of the student movement in Seoul, protesting the environmental damage brought on by industrialization.
“When I was a student, I was interested in the environment,” she said. “Many, many years ago, I was involved in political activity for protecting factory workers. It was a little bit challenging with the police, trying to catch the student activists.”
It was little surprise then that she would ultimately decide to leave her research area in polymers to instead study air pollution. However this change also brought on a relocation to the United States. She attended the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and received her Ph.D. in atmospheric chemistry, and then spent several more years there as a research assistant professor before ultimately becoming an associate professor at the University of Florida in 2007.
Since 1990, Dr. Jang has authored over 50 research publications, and if you ever visit the fourth floor of Black Hall, you’ll see several research posters on the wall with her name included, and even an ‘About Me’ flyer where she lists her research projects as “too many”.
“Some of my projects are for transportation, some for atmospheric studies, and some are also a mix,” she explained. “Automobiles produce NO2, ozone, and organic aerosols. If you ever go to a gas station, you can smell the gasoline evaporating while you pump or from the car engine. I study how much aerosol forms in the atmosphere.”
In 2011, she built the Atmospheric Photochemical Outdoor Reactor (UF-APHOR) dual chambers. It is one of the largest outdoor chambers in the United States, and it is used to study the atmospheric photochemical aging of volatile hydrocarbons and combustion smoke, secondary organic aerosol (SOA) formation, climate forcing effect and adverse health effect of atmospheric particulate matter.
“We introduce all kinds of things into it and see how much particles form, how chemical composure changes, and the reactions,” Jang said. “Then we send our findings mostly to Public Health. Sometimes we study dust. America doesn’t have as much of a problem anymore, but they did in the 1930s. when people moved out west, their horses, cows and sheep all overgrazed – there were a lot of dust storms.”
“Africa, Asia, all have a huge problem now. They cut trees down and overgraze,” she explained and talked a little bit about her research in Mongolia and how dust from their deserts can carry over pollutants via air particles all the way to California.
Included in her latest achievements is her fourth patent. On August 18, 2015, the patent was issued under the title “New Techniques to Measure Acidity of Airborne Matter using Reflectance UV-Spectrometry”, US Patent No. 9,110,048. It includes devices and methods for measuring the acidity of airborne matter. A filter can be impregnated with an indicator dye which changes color in response to changes in acidity. After the sample passes through the filter, the filter can be analyzed using UV-visible miniature spectrometry. It has various applications, including sensors in cars.
To learn more about some of Dr. Jang’s work, you can visit her profile or contact her directly:
Office: 480D Black Hall
Phone: 352.846.1744
Email: mjang@ufl.edu