UCI gets grant for molecular study

October 8, 2004

By Gary Robbins

The National Science Foundation is giving $7.5 million to UC Irvine to analyze how chemicals behave when air interacts with rain, fog and humidity, and dew that forms on buildings.

The money, to be paid over five years, also will enable UCI to create the nation's seventh Environmental Molecular Science Institute.

"Our mission is to uncover how molecules in the environment are interacting and potentially influencing everything from the amount of air pollution in Los Angeles to climate change," UCI chemist Barbara Finlayson-Pitts said in a statement.

Finlayson-Pitts will direct the center.