Veronica Vaida

This information is accurate as of the fellowship year indicated for each fellow.

Veronica Vaida’s scholarly interests are understanding chemical reactivity with a special focus on light-initiated chemical reactions in organic, inorganic, and organometallic systems. Over the past fifteen years at the University of Colorado, she has learned about complex problems of the atmosphere and explored chemical reactivity in the context of atmospheric chemistry and climate. She uses these problems in teaching chemistry to illustrate fundamental principles of chemistry in undergraduate and graduate courses. Her research group has been involved in bringing techniques and concepts of physical chemistry to the study of atmospheric chemistry and climate.

While at Radcliffe, Vaida will work in a new area of research, focused on the exploration of fundamental molecular properties of organic films at aqueous-air interfaces. These structures are models for atmospheric aerosols. The importance of atmospheric aerosols to human health, climate, and chemical reactions depends on their composition, size, mobility, and unique interactions with their planetary chemical environment, properties she hopes to investigate through experiments.

Vaida earned her BS from Brown University and her PhD from Yale University. She served on the faculty at Harvard University before joining the faculty at the University of Colorado. She was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship for 2004–2005.