Title: Science with an Environmental Approach 

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Assistant Professor Lambert Doezema, Ph.D., investigates the chemical causes for smog, while mentoring students to develop their own analytical approaches to science.

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Assistant Professor Lambert Doezema, Ph.D., is an atmospheric and analytical chemist, a convergence of two of his interests: “I've always been interested in environmental causes and I wanted to go into the atmospheric field to merge my environmental enthusiasm with chemistry and to do chemistry that had real-world environmental applications.”

His current research focuses on air pollution, investigating chemical precursors to ozone formation called hydrocarbons. Ozone formation at ground level is one of the bigger, more problematic and dangerous components of smog. “Doing our research in Los Angeles is especially important, because it is one of the worst U.S. cities in terms of the number of smog days and high ozone levels,” says Doezema.

The assistant professor teaches a general chemistry course for freshmen and instrumental analysis lecture and lab course for upper division students. "The instrumental analysis courses are fun because the students cover instrument theory in lecture and then go into the lab and apply the lessons from lecture in a real-world environment”

Doezema notes the influence of undergraduate research at LMU. "It's exciting to get into a research lab where the answer is unknown.” The smaller classes in the Frank R. Seaver College of Science and Engineering provide students with direct interaction with professors, as well as many research opportunities. This leads to the ultimate goal for Doezema: “students doing research and thinking for themselves.”