Veronica Vaida

Veronica Vaida is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Colorado Boulder, affiliated with the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES). Her office is located at EKLC - W145F, and she can be contacted via email at vaida@colorado.edu or by phone at 303-492-8605.

She earned her Ph.D. from Yale University in 1977. Her research program explores water- and sunlight-mediated processes in planetary atmospheres, including contemporary and prebiotic Earth environments, using spectroscopic, photofragment, and theoretical techniques to investigate molecules, radicals, and their complexes. Current work emphasizes aqueous environments and water-air interfaces, particularly studying photochemical synthesis of organic systems, reactivity of organic acids in atmospheric aerosols, and the critical role of aqueous-phase photochemistry in atmospheric models.

Her scientific awards and honors include:

• Fellow of the Sloan Foundation (1980)
• Fellow of the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher Scholar (1984)
• Fellow of the Erskine (1994)
• Fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard (2006)
• ACS Wilson award in spectroscopy (2011)
• Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2012)
• Elected to the National Academy of Sciences (2020)

Professor Vaida has led multiple CIRES-funded research projects, including:

• Photochemistry of fatty acids at environmentally relevant water surfaces (2022)
• Heterogeneous photo-initiated chemistry of alkyl organics in Earth's atmosphere (2016)
• Modification of aerosol air/water interfaces due to aqueous reactions (2014)
• Organic aerosols as reactors in planetary atmospheres (2004)
• Water complexes as unconventional radiation absorbers (2002)
• Role of meteoritic transition metals in aerosol properties (2001)
• Chemical reactivity in organic aerosols (1999)

She actively mentors through the CIRES Education and Community Action (CECA) initiative supporting graduate students and postdocs, and leads the Vaida Research Group in collaborations with Université Paris–Est Créteil Val de Marne using the CESAM environmental chamber for atmospheric simulation studies.