Keith Bein,, PhD

Position Title
Associate Researcher

Bio

I received my Bachelor of Science degrees in Physics and Chemistry from California State University Chico and my Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences at U.C. Davis. I am currently an Associate Professional Researcher at the Air Quality Research Center and a member of the Research Faculty at the Center for Health and the Environment at U.C. Davis. My primary research interests include the health effects of air pollution, air pollution meteorology, the role of particles in climate change, design and development of aerosol measurement and sampling techniques, air quality modeling, carbon capture from industrial sources and environmental justice. My research at UC Davis is entirely supported by extramural funding, and I am currently PI or co-PI on a number of concurrent projects, including (i) the differential toxicity of urban, rural and agricultural air pollution sources, (ii) design and development of novel instruments and analytical techniques for measuring the physical, optical and chemical properties of PM, (iii) detection, characterization and source attribution of airborne Coccidioides immitis spores, which cause Valley Fever, (iv) identifying small nitrogen-free molecular pathways that can bind CO2 in carbon capture and sequestration technologies, (v) modeling the dynamics of condensable PM emitted from industrial sources and (vi) the neurotoxicity of real-time exposure to traffic related emissions, including autism spectrum disorder and Alzheimer’s disease.