Past Masters Students

Lucy

Lucy Cheadle

Lucy Cheadle completed her master's in environmental engineering in the air quality track. She received her BS from Washington University in St. Louis in chemical engineering and is originally from Seattle, Washington. Her research focused on the small scale spatial variability of ozone in Boulder and in addition she was involved with coordinating the AQIQ program. When she’s not in the lab, Lucy loves running around in circles as fast...
Katya

Katya Hafich

Katya is a recovering biogeochemist, who worked at CU in two capacities as the Education and Outreach Coordinator for the AirWaterGas Sustainability Research Network, and as the program coordinator of the Learn More About Climate initiative at the Office for Outreach and Engagement. She focused on developing and sharing resources to translate science research into meaningful tools for public engagement and on building mutually beneficial partnerships between Colorado communities and...
Sudarshan stands in front of holiday decorations

Sudarshan Jagannathan

Sudarshan is an international student from Bangalore, India. He has worked on Embedded Systems, primarily in the Biomedical and Healthcare engineering domain. He is a first-year master's student in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department. He has been a part of the Hannigan Air Quality and Technology research laboratory since September 2021 and works on Embedded System Design for the pods being developed by the team. Sudarshan is also a...
Eric Kolb

Eric Kolb

Eric is currently a first year PhD student in Mechanical Engineering. He is originally from the tiny town of Mont Vernon, NH, and completed his Bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering at Rochester Institute of Technology in upstate New York. He will be working on measuring and characterizing different chemical pollutants and emissions from wildfires. Eric loves backpacking around the world, hiking, and cooking/eating weird and interesting foods.
Elise

Elise Mesenbring

Elise Mesenbring was a graduate student in the Mechanical Engineering department at CU Boulder. She grew up near Minneapolis, Minnesota and decided to continue braving those arctic winters while obtaining her BA in Physics and Mathematics at Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter, MN. When Elise started at CU, she worked on the group’s previous cookstove project, REACCTING, and then transitioned to the P3 project. In her spare time, Elise...
Brittany smiles in front of yellow aspen trees

Brittany Nixon

Brittany is a first year mechanical engineering PhD student. Due to being a military kid, she always answers a different place when asked where she’s from. She lived in Maryland most recently, where she completed a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Maryland in 2020 and an A.A. in Engineering from Howard Community College in 2018. She is working on predicting particulate matter soiling of photovoltaic modules using...
Helena smiles next to a blooming hydrangea bush

Helena Pliszka

Helena Pliszka is at the University of Colorado Boulder pursuing a Master of Research in Environmental Engineering with a focus on air quality as well as earning the Mortenson Center's Certificate in Global Engineering. She is currently serving as the Technical Assistant employing the lab's low-cost air quality sensor package (Y-Pod) in a year-long Air Quality InQuiry (AQIQ) course, co-led by Dr. Knight, that facilitates environmental engagement with students in...
Kira

Kira Sadighi

Kira Sadighi completed her masters in the Environment and Energy track. She joined the lab in 2014 and worked on the LA Ozone project, South Boulder Creek project, and some community-based projects. When she’s not studying air quality, Kira enjoys hiking, backpacking, and sewing.

Past PhD Students

Joanna

Joanna Casey

Joanna Casey is generally curious and enjoys learning about our planet’s atmosphere and its interfaces with human exploits. She is interested in air on scales ranging from the small volumes of molecules enclosed by the walls of our homes, to community and regional scale airsheds, on up to the global scale atmosphere and how its constituents interact with the earth system. As a PhD student, she utilized emerging low-cost sensor...
Ashley

Ashley Collier-Oxandale

Ashley Collier-Oxandale completed her PhD in Environmental Engineering at CU in 2018. She had been working with this lab since 2011. Her work focused on air quality sensor quantification and research applications. For example, one of her projects involved using a low-cost sensor network to examine the spatial variability of methane and non-methane hydrocarbons at the neighborhood scale in order to better understand potential exposures for the residents of that...
Kyle

Kyle Karber

Kyle Karber was a Mechanical Engineering PhD student at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is interested in renewable energy in developing communities – specifically the drivers and barriers to adoption of small scale solar lighting products as replacements for smoky kerosene lamps. Why aren’t more off-grid households using solar products which are cleaner, brighter, money-saving, and locally available? Kyle spent 8 months in The Arusha and Kilimanjaro regions of...
Kristen

Kristen Okorn

Kristen Okorn earned her PhD in Environmental Engineering in 2021. She previously completed her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Mechanical Engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology. At CU, she studied the spatial variability of pollutants near urban oil drilling sites in Los Angeles and Colorado's Front Range, and was involved in the AQIQ program. Kristen is excited to join the NASA Ames Research Center as a postdoc.
david

David Pfotenhauer

David Pfotenhauer earned his PhD in Mechanical Engineering with a focus on Energy and Environment in 2020. Originally born and raised in Madison Wisconsin, David studied Physics and Mathematics in undergraduate, receiving his BA degree from Luther College in Decorah Iowa. He worked on the group’s Cookstove Project and performed airborne particulate matter filter analysis from various sampling sites, including Navrongo, Ghana and Denver, CO. In addition to hiking, camping,...
Ricardo

Ricardo Piedrahita

Ricardo Piedrahita completed his PhD in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder. His research focused on low-cost air quality monitoring, cookstove adoption, and exposure assessment. This included REACCTING, a project in Northern Ghana performing personal, microenvironmental, and regional air quality measurements as part of a cookstove intervention study. In addition to cookstove research, he is interested in quantification and uncertainty estimation for low cost air quality sensors, as...
Sarah

Sarah Toth

Sarah earned her PhD in Environmental Engineering in 2021. She received her B.S. in environmental engineering from the University of Florida in 2016. When not researching photovoltaic soiling, she is road biking, successfully raising her cat Millie, or snowboarding. Sarah is excited to join the Rocky Mountain Institute’s Carbon-free Electricity team in Boulder for the next chapter of her career.

Past Undergraduate Students

Bobbie kicks a soccer ball in a game

Bobbie Golik

Bobbie is a fourth-year undergraduate in the Mechanical Engineering partnership program between Colorado Mesa University and the University of Colorado Boulder. She is a part of the Women in Science and Engineering club at CMU and enjoys playing soccer and going skiing in her free time.
Whitney smiles in front of a landscape of red rocks and a blue sky

Whitney Knopp

Whitney is a third-year undergraduate from Denver, Colorado studying Environmental Engineering with minors in Global Engineering and Political Science. She is involved in the Society of Environmental Engineers (SEVEN) and the Black Student Alliance (BSA) at CU and is a member of the Professional Engineering Fraternity Theta Tau. She enjoys hiking, doing yoga, playing golf, listening to music, and spending time with her friends, family, and puppy Pepper. Her research...
Rachel

Rachel Moore

Rachel has a Bachelor's of Science in Applied Mathematics from CU Boulder. She worked on several projects during her time in the Hannigan Lab but contributed mostly to the REACCTING project. She executed data analysis on GPS and particulate matter data collected from homes in Ghana. In addition to her work on the REACCTING project, she was the TA for the Hannigan Lab's outreach program, AQ-IQ. Rachel left the lab...
Kate Stelwagon

Kate Stelwagon

Kate Stelwagon is a second year undergraduate student in Civil Engineering, graduating in 2023. Kate is a dedicated member of Engineers Without Borders CU, currently holding both the position of Chapter Vice President, as well as Project Manager for Team Nepal. Previously she has researched through UROP (Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program), developing low cost options for remote monitoring of flow rates in small scale development settings.