A San Diego researcher is being honored by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) for extraordinary scientific achievements.
Kimberly Prather, a UC San Diego atmospheric chemist, is among 20 researchers being honored by the academy, specifically for her work on aerosols — tiny airborne particles that impact the world around them.
Prather studies natural and human-made aerosols to understand how they influence the climate, human health and the atmosphere.
Her research led to the construction of a massive ocean wave simulator on UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography campus. The device allows scientists from around the world to study the interaction between the ocean and atmosphere in hot, cold or even polluted conditions.
The San Diego researcher is widely known in her field for developing a way to measure the size, chemical composition and source of individual aerosol particles. These are tools that rely on that aerosol time-of-flight mass spectrometry are now widely used in field studies around the world.
Prather is the founding director of the Center for Aerosol Impacts on Chemistry of the Environment (CAICE) and is UC San Diego’s distinguished chair in atmospheric chemistry.
But Prather’s public profile was elevated when she advocated wearing masks to prevent the transmission of COVID-19 during the pandemic. It is a position she continues to advocate for today.
“I just keep pushing ahead because I know that it’s helping the greater good,” Prather said. “I know that the message often isn’t what people want to hear.”
Prather also pushed federal officials to recognize that aerosols played a key role in the transmission of the disease, a policy position the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) was slow to adopt. Eventually the CDC acknowledged that aerosols, not airborne droplets, were responsible for transmission of the illness.
The award recognizes her leadership and guidance on aerosol transmission of COVID-19.
“This is all fixable. That’s what I’ve said since day one,” Prather said. “It’s a fixable problem, that has been my message. Clean your air. It’s so easy to filter and clean indoor air and the world needs to do this.”
Her public positions on COVID-19 transmission and her willingness to speak about them won her praise and some pretty mean rebukes on social media. But she never backed down. Prather reminded herself that the virus was the enemy.
“She was an advocate for masking. And it was a completely political issue and she got the heat for that too,” said Pradeep Khosla, the UC San Diego chancellor. “But she didn’t back down. And I can tell you her positions were confirmed. Reconfirmed. And yet reconfirmed.”
Prather is currently involved in research trying to understand the health risks linked to sewage contamination that gets airborne in the surf along the coast of South Bay’s Imperial Beach.
“We are proud that she has been able to do so much of this groundbreaking work at UC San Diego,” said Margaret Leinen, the vice chancellor of marine sciences at UC San Diego and the director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
The award will be handed out at the National Academy of Sciences 161st meeting in April.
