hero image
Alexei Khalizov - New Jersey Institute of Technology. Newark, NJ, US

Alexei Khalizov

Associate Professor, Chemistry and Environmental Science | New Jersey Institute of Technology

Newark, NJ, UNITED STATES

Alexei Khalizov's research focuses on the chemical and physical processes that govern the transformations of atmospheric pollutants.

Spotlight

Media

Publications:

Documents:

Photos:

loading image Headshot loading image

Videos:

NJIT expert Alexei Khalizov answers questions on air quality effects from Canadian wildfires

Audio/Podcasts:

Social

Biography

Alexei received his undergraduate degree in Chemistry from Bashkir State University (Ufa, Russia) in 1994 and his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the Ufa Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1997. He started research in Atmospheric Chemistry during his NATO/NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship at McGill University, where he investigated the oxidation of atmospheric elemental mercury. Later, he studied the optical properties and homogeneous freezing of supercooled water droplets as a Research Associate at the University of Waterloo and the formation and impacts of atmospheric aerosols as an Assistant Research Scientist at Texas A&M University. The central aim of his current research is to understand the chemical transformations and environmental impacts of atmospheric pollutants, including aerosol nanoparticles and mercury.

Areas of Expertise (5)

Air Quality

Atmospheric Chemistry

Atmospheric Pollutants

Aerosol Nanoparticles

Mercury

Accomplishments (5)

NSF CAREER: Molecular Mechanism of Atmospheric Mercury through Speciation-Resolved Experiments, National Science Foundation (professional)

2016

Rising Star Research Award, College of Sciences and Liberal Arts, New Jersey Institute of Technology (professional)

2016

Dean's Distinguished Achievement Award, College of Geosciences, Texas A&M (professional)

2012

Research Productivity Award, Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Texas A&M (professional)

2012

NATO-NSERC Postdoctoral Science Fellowship, NATO-NSERC (professional)

2000

Education (2)

Ufa Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences: Ph.D., Physical Chemistry 1997

Bashkir State University: B.S., Chemistry 1994

Media Appearances (4)

NJ air quality improves Friday but smoke still poses risk

The Record  online

2023-06-09

The two most important pollutants when it comes to measuring air quality and ozone and PM2.5. Typically in New Jersey, according to NJIT environmental sciences professor Alexei Khalizov, there are more days with ozone exceedances rather than PM2.5. That has not been the case this week, when PM2.5 has surpassed hazardous levels due to the wildfire smoke.

view more

Lessening smoke leads to improved air quality in NJ; still unhealthy for some groups

The Record  online

2023-06-09

In a week when New Jersey has experienced historically bad smoke and air quality conditions, the forecast for Friday and the weekend shows marked improvement, although sensitive groups are still at risk.

view more

Canada Wildfire Smoke In NJ: Expert Answers Common Questions (VIDEO)

Newark Patch  online

2023-06-08

On Wednesday, Alexei Khalizov, an associate professor of chemistry and environmental science at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), took time out from his research to explain what millions of residents of New Jersey and New York are experiencing as a result of wildfires hundreds of miles to the north.

view more

NJIT researchers awarded $620k grant to study climate change impact of soot

EurekAlert!  online

2022-11-09

Associate Professor of Chemistry Alexei Khalizov and Associate Professor of Chemical and Materials Engineering Gennady Gor will lead the project, “A Multiscale Model for Restructuring of Atmospheric Soot Particles”.

view more

Answers (12)

Wildfire Haze - How does what we’re experiencing relate to your research?

View Answer >

My collaborator and I received a major grant from the National Science Foundation to study the particles released by combustion. As they travel through the air, they change both in shape and in composition. And these changes affect their toxicity and they affect their impact on climate. These particles actually are one of the warming agents. So, we hope that within about three years of working on this project, we’ll be able to explain better what happens and then modelers will be able to predict the impacts of such events with better accuracy.

Wildfire Haze - What can we do individually and collectively to protect ourselves?

View Answer >

We can help ourselves by staying indoors and wearing masks if you have to go outside. Certainly, exercising outside is not a good idea even while wearing a mask. Also, if you have a central air conditioning system, you can turn on the fan to run the air through the filter, which will remove some of these particles. It depends on what kind of filter you have — high efficiency or regular.Make sure that it's an N-95 mask, not a surgical mask. A surgical mask is not is not going to help you at all.

Wildfire Haze - Will rain immediately clear the smoke?

View Answer >

Yes, it will. If we could have rain, then the rain would remove the majority of these particles. And in fact, I believe we've been experiencing the smoke for several days, almost a week now. It would go up and decrease. And we’ve had several rains and those rains did really clear out some smoke.

Articles (5)

Ultrasonic study of water adsorbed in nanoporous glasses

Physical Review E

2023 Thermodynamic properties of fluids confined in nanopores differ from those observed in the bulk. To investigate the effect of nanoconfinement on water compressibility, we perform water sorption experiments on two nanoporous glass samples while concomitantly measuring the speed of longitudinal and shear ultrasonic waves in these samples.

view more

Surface Tension of Organophosphorus Compounds: Sarin and its Surrogates

Langmuir

2023 While the production and stockpiling of organophosphorus chemical warfare agents (CWAs), such as sarin, was banned three decades ago, CWAs have remained a threat. New approaches for decontamination and destruction of CWAs require detailed knowledge of their various physicochemical properties. In particular, surface tension is needed to describe the formation and evolution of hazardous aerosols when CWA liquids are dispersed in the air.

view more

Drastically different restructuring of airborne and surface-anchored soot aggregates

Journal of Aerosol Science

2023 Combustion soot particles are fractal aggregates of hydrophobic spherules. Mixing of soot particles with other chemicals during atmospheric processing may partially offset their hydrophobicity, promoting water uptake and structural compaction. We investigated morphological changes in fractal soot particles coated by sulfuric acid and then humidified, both in airborne and surface-bound states. Airborne soot was probed by tandem differential mobility analysis.

view more

Molecular Simulation of Benzene Adsorption in Graphitic and Amorphous Carbon Slit Pores

Journal of Chemical & Engineering Data

2022 Atmospheric soot consists of fractal aggregates of spherical particles, which are made of ordered (graphitic) and disordered (amorphous) carbon. Condensation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) on the surface of spherical particles and in the junctions between these particles induces morphological changes in soot aggregates. We studied the interactions of benzene molecules with graphitic and amorphous carbon slit pores, where benzene represented PAHs and slit pores represented the junctions between carbon spheres in a soot aggregate.

view more

Exchange reactions alter molecular speciation of gaseous oxidized mercury

ACS Earth and Space Chemistry

2021 The knowledge of speciation of gaseous oxidized mercury (GOM) is crucial for understanding the atmospheric mercury chemistry and global cycle. Because of the low atmospheric abundance of GOM, its chemical analysis requires preconcentration and often involves the use of collection substrates, such as KCl, various adsorbents, or membranes.

view more