Affiliated Faculty
CERT Faculty
Richard Arnott is a Professor of Economics, with a focus on transportation. His current research focuses on the economics of downtown parking and traffic congestion and on urban transportation/land use/environmental forecasting. He is also co-authoring a graduate urban economics textbook for the Harvard University Press.
Akua Asa-Awuku received her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2008. She also earned her M.S in Chemical Engineering at Georgia Tech in 2006. She received her B.S in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2003. In 2008, Dr. Asa-Awuku also served as a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Atmospheric Particle Studies at Carnegie Mellon University.
Matthew Barth is the Yeager Families Professor of Engineering and also the Director of CE-CERT. Dr. Barth’s research focuses is in Transportation Systems, in particular how it relates to energy and air quality issues. Current research interests include Intelligent Transportation System Technology, Transportation/Emissions Modeling, Vehicle Activity Analysis, and Vehicle Navigation.
Kanok Boriboonsomsin is a Research Engineer at CE-CERT, conducting research in the Transportation Systems Research group. His research focuses on the relationship of land use and transportation to energy and air quality, transportation/emissions modeling, Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) technology, and traffic simulation.
Bill Carter is an Emeritus Research Chemist at both CE-CERT and UCR’s Air Pollution Research Center. His research concerns the gas-phase atmospheric reactions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and the assessment of reactivities of VOCs in the atmosphere. Chemical mechanisms which he developed have been implemented in airshed models used by a number of control agencies and research groups, and VOC reactivity scales also developed by Dr. Carter are widely utilized in assessing ozone impacts of alternative fuels.
David Cocker is a Professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering. Dr. Cocker’s research concentration is on the physical and chemical processes leading to aerosol formation in the atmosphere. This includes research into gas-to-particle conversion and transformation processes of aerosols. Dr. Cocker also works closely with researchers from CE-CERT's Emissions and Fuels Research group to develop and evaluate methods for quantifying primary particulate emissions from diesel engines, and to apply these methods for studies of emission rates and the impacts of emission control technologies.
Tom Durbin is a Research Engineer in the Vehicle Emissions Research Group at CE-CERT. He is conducting research in the area of vehicle emissions with an emphasis on studying particulate emissions. This research includes programs to quantify particulate emissions from in-use gasoline and diesel vehicles, smoking vehicles, as well as alternative fueled vehicles.
Dennis Fitz is a Research Engineer at CE-CERT as well as CE-CERT’s Deputy Director. He is also manages CE-CERT’s Atmospheric Processing Group. His group conducts research to determine the fate of air pollutants after they are emitted into the atmosphere using measurements and modeling. The primary focus is to determine the reactivity of air pollutants to form ozone and particulate matter.
Wendy S. Goliff is an Assistant Researcher at CE-CERT at the University of California, Riverside. She received her Ph.D. and Bachelor’s of Science Degree in Chemistry at the University of California, Irvine. Her atmospheric chemistry research focuses on sampling and analysis of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and gas-phase chemistry mechanism development. She has collaborated on the Central California Ozone Study (CCOS) as well as photochemical modeling studies to further develop a VOC reaction scheme for the Regional Atmospheric Chemistry Mechanism, Version 2 (RACM2).
Kent Johnson is part of the research faculty at CE-CERT. He joined the research faculty in 2010 after serving on the Center's staff as Principal Development Engineer and manager of the Mobile Emissions Laboratory (MEL). He received his Ph.D. in Chemical and Environmental Engineering from UC Riverside where his doctoral research focused on the impact of emissions on ambient air quality. More specifically Johnson's research interests include: 1) quantification of in-use emission measurements; 2) advancement of measurement techniques; and 3) study of fuel impacts on emissions for diesel engines.
Heejung Jung is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering. Dr. Jung’s current research focus areas are diesel PM emissions, nanoparticle synthesis, and air quality. He is also interested in fuel and additives, as they are the source of power and emissions through the combustion process.
George Karavalakis is a member of the research faculty at CE-CERT. Dr. Karavalakis received his Ph.D. from the National Technical University of Athens, Laboratory of Fuels Technology and Lubricants, School of Chemical Engineering. His research interests are in the field of fuels/biofuels technology and science and in chassis/engine dynamometer studies with the purpose to investigate the fuel impact on exhaust emissions and engine performance, fuel additives, and exhaust after treatment.
Wayne Miller joined CERT in December 2000 after a distinguished career with Sun Oil Co. and UNOCAL. Dr. Miller brings more than 25 years of experience in technology planning, chemical engineering processes, new product development/commercialization, business development and multi-national relationships. Dr. Miller holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology and a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Additionally, he has had training at the Harvard Business School and Wharton School Forum on emerging technology and emerging markets.
Joe Norbeck is the W. Ruel Johnson Professor of Engineering and heads the UCR Environmental Research Institute. His current research is focused on the development of synthetic transportation fuels using thermo-chemical techniques.
Chan Seung Park is a Research Engineer in the Alternative Fuels and Renewable Energy Research Program at CE-CERT. Dr. Park has established a Gasification Research Laboratory at CE-CERT to investigate the steam pyrolysis and hydro-gasification of candidate carbonaceous waste materials. His research interests include real-time monitoring of chemical species involved in high-temperature and high-pressure reaction with Residual Gas Analyzer, anddeveloping the hydrogen gas sensor for the chemical process.
John Pisano is a Development Engineer at CE-CERT. Mr. Pisano’s expertise in the development of spectroscopic instrumentation and techniques, primarily Tunable Diode Laser Spectroscopy (TDLAS), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), and Differential Optical Absorption Spectroscopy (DOAS) has opened up significant research opportunities in producing instrumentation and techniques that can be employed in both research and industrial applications. Mr. Pisano is currently working on research associated with the Atmospheric Processes program and the Emissions and Fuels Research program at CE-CERT.
Bob Russell is a Research Engineer in the Emissions and Fuels Research area at CE-CERT. Dr. Russell has more than 28 years of experience in research and development solving technical and product quality problems by analysis of data and received his Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from the University of California, Irvine, studying under Nobel Laureate Dr. F. S. Rowland. As Senior Research Associate in the Fuels Research Department of Unocal, he developed and patented the most cost-effective diesel fuel reformulation in the industry which was worth $24 million per year to Unocal.
Sadrul Ula is part of the research faculty at CE-CERT under the Southern California Research Initiative for Solar Energy. Dr. Ula received his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Leeds, United Kingdom. During 2004-05 he served as the Energy Advisor to the Governor of Wyoming, the largest energy producing state in the country. His fields of interest are: electrical power, power engineering and energy education, energy policies and management.
Bill Welch is a Development Engineer at CE-CERT. His expertise includes emission sampling and analysis, with a focus on measurement aspects of Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) emissions. At CE-CERT, Mr. Welch has led the development of test protocols for the evaluation of a portable NOx analyzer and assessment of emissions from commercial cooking operations. He also directs projects related to instrumentation for emissions measurement, including the development of a laboratory with a heavy-duty truck trailer for on-road emissions measurements.
Charles Wyman is the Ford Motor Company Professor of Engineering at UCR. Dr. Wyman’s research targets the biological conversion of cellulosic biomass to commodity products including ethanol for use as a transportation fuel. His research focuses on the potential use of agricultural waste products, such as corn stover, sugarcane bagasse and rice hulls as the raw materials for cellulosic ethanol, which can be made from a wide range of materials. Currently, most ethanol is made from corn (in the U.S.) or sugar (in Brazil), which have many other uses. Fast-growing plants such as switchgrass or certain poplar and willow varieties, and even municipal solid waste, are potential feedstocks for cellulosic ethanol.
Yushan Yan is a Professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering. His research focuses on zeolite thin films as insulators for computer chips, corrosion-resistant coatings for aerospace alloys, and hydrophilic and antimicrobial coatings for water separation in space station, nanostructured fuel cell catalysts and membranes, and design, synthesis, and applications of nanoparticles, nanowires, and nanotubes.