~ for immediate release

news release March 30, 2006

Contact: Heather Emmons, DRI PIO, heather.emmons@dri.edu, Reno (775) 673-7313 (w), (702) 743-3435 (c)
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DRI's Colin Warden Award given to Rajan Chakrabarty for research into fire-produced particles

RENO, Nev.– Rajan Kumar Chakrabarty, a graduate research assistant in the Desert Research Institute's division of atmospheric sciences, has received the $1,500 Colin Warden Memorial Endowment Award for 2006 from DRI for his research on quantifying shapes and sizes of particulate matter (PM) generated from the burning of wildland fuels, such as sagebrush, wood and grasses.  This work has implications for understanding how global climate change occurs because PM affects how Earth's atmosphere heats and cools.

Chakrabarty's award-winning research paper, on which he is the first author, is entitled "Emissions from the laboratory combustion of wildland fuels: particle morphology and size."  The paper centers on quantifying the morphology of different kinds of combustion products.  Chakrabarty's work shows that when wildland fuels are burned, different particle shapes and sizes are produced by different fuel sources.  These particle shapes and sizes can then be quantified in both two and three dimensions using fractal mathematics.

Ultimately, Chakrabarty's work will be used in global climate change models because PM affects the way heat is transferred to Earth's atmosphere—different particle shapes can either aid in absorbing or reflecting heat.  By understanding and quantifying particle shapes produced by different kinds of fire fuels, their effect on Earth's climate can be predicted more accurately.

"The research in this paper is only the beginning," Chakrabarty said. "I plan on investigating other properties of these particles, especially their formation mechanisms and chemistry."

Chakrabarty, who came to DRI with his undergraduate degree in electronics engineering from the University of Madras in India, is continuing to work on PM at DRI with advisor Hans Moosmüller, and is pursuing his Ph.D. to continue his investigations into many aspects of combustion-generated PM and their links to global climate change.

The $1,500 award is named for Colin Warden, a Washoe Medical Center electrician and an ardent environmentalist who died in 1991.  His family and friends generously established the endowment to promote environmental research by graduate students working at DRI or supervised by DRI scientists.

ABOUT DRI: A nonprofit, statewide division of the Nevada System of Higher Education, DRI pursues a full-time program of basic and applied environmental research on a local, national, and international scale.  More than 500 full- and part-time scientists, technicians, and support staff conduct more than 300 research projects at DRI annually.  DRI generates $45 million in total revenue consisting predominately of competitively won research contracts and grants. The State of Nevada provides critical funding in support of DRI's administration, operations, and maintenance through the Nevada System of Higher education budget.  While DRI’s portion of the NSHE budget is less than 1 percent, the institute leverages these funds to enhance its competitiveness.