Alice (Xia) Zhu, M.Sc.
Environmental Analytical Scientist | Plastic Pollution Researcher | Environmental Champion

I am a PhD student in the Rochman Lab at the University of Toronto studying the sources, transport, and fate of plastic pollution in the environment as my main thesis. On the side, I also investigate the interconnections between plastic pollution, carbon cycling, and climate change.
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I am an environmental analytical scientist with extensive training in environmental sampling methods including sampling water and sediment for microplastics, passive air sampling for volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and sampling benthic macroinvertebrate communities to assess ecosystem health. I also have extensive training in operating analytical instrumentation including cavity ring-down spectroscopy for greenhouse gas quantification, ion chromatography, Raman and FTIR spectroscopy, GC-MS for quantifying organic compounds in ancient groundwater, and LC-MS for detecting aldehydes and other VOCs released from the heating of cooking oil. I am proficient in R, Python, MATLAB, and GIS software.