Wisam Mohammed Receives MS2Discovery Student Researcher Award

Wisam Mohammed is the recipient of the MS2Discovery Student Researcher Award in 2021.  His current research as an MSc student supervised by Dr. Al-Abadleh focuses on the air quality across four elementary schools located near different emission sources in Kitchener, ON.  The Region of Waterloo, being the third fastest growing region in all of Canada, has only one air quality monitoring station in Victoria Park.  With the continued expansion of this region, it’s crucial now more than ever to implement an air quality monitoring network to identify pollutant hotspots in the city.  The main questions this project aims to answer are:

(1) Is a single air quality monitoring station sufficient in accurately detecting the quality of air at a local scale?

(2) What are the main sources of emissions in the City of Kitchener? Are the current laws sufficient in minimizing these emissions?

(3) How does the quality of air vary with seasonal shifts and under different meteorological events (wind, rain, etc.)?

The findings of this study will serve as the foundation of a potential country-wide air quality network in the near future.  In addition, the findings can be used to inform local communities about the impacts of poor air quality using the Kitchener air quality dashboard.

"This award provided me with the funding to purchase the necessary software needed to continue my work in assessing the air quality around elementary schools in Kitchener, ON."  These funds were used to purchase a one year license to Igor Pro 8 which allowed for the graphical representation and statistical testing of my collected data.  In addition, the ZeFir Package for Igor Pro 8 was also purchased.  This allowed for the identification of pollutant dispersion across our sensor network as a result of wind. The remainder of the funds were allocated to purchasing additional cloud storage for my group.  This massive increase in cloud storage (from 100 GB to 3 TB) allowed for the expansion of the project scope and the streamlined sharing of progress between our collaborative partners.  I would like to thank MS2Discovery for providing me with the funds to drastically improve the efficiency of the data analysis and sharing of results within the group.

Wisam's future interests are to contribute to other aspects of environmental chemistry, primarily in the solar panel industry.  There are many bottlenecks in the use of solar panels as a main source of energy such as energy storage, dilute photon energy conversion, and cost of production.  He firmly believes that his contributions can aid in surpassing these bottlenecks.

Wisam Mohammed was a recent graduate of the Honours Biology and Chemistry (BSc) program at Wilfrid Laurier University.  He is currently an MSc Student with a focus in Environmental and Physical Chemistry supervised by Dr. Hind Al-Abadleh.