Bio

Zhen uses geospatial analytics to investigate how human activities are altering atmospheric composition and chemistry, and how these changes interact with climate change. She utilizes statistics, high-performance computing and satellite observations to investigate the sources, chemical formation, spatial distributions and trends of air pollutants and greenhouse gases. She develops algorithms and modeling approaches to expand our process-level understanding of man-made and natural emissions. She also applies atmospheric chemistry models to understand the sensitivity of air pollution and its exposure to the emissions of precursor gases.

Publications

• A sector-based inversion synergizing NO2, SO2, and CO observations to improve sectoral activity rates and anthropogenic CO2 emissions , (2026)
• Comment on egusphere-2026-313 , (2026)
• Constraining NOx emissions with satellite NO2 data to improve modeling of 2023 wildfire air quality , Atmospheric Environment (2026)
• Assessing the relative impacts of satellite ozone and its precursor observations to improve global tropospheric ozone analysis using multiple chemical reanalysis systems , Atmospheric chemistry and physics (2025)
• Intercomparison of global ground-level ozone datasets for health-relevant metrics , Atmospheric chemistry and physics (2025)
• Intercomparison of global ground-level ozone datasets for health-relevant metrics , (2025)
• What can we learn about tropospheric OH from satellite observations of methane? , Atmospheric chemistry and physics (2025)
• High-resolution US methane emissions inferred from an inversion of 2019 TROPOMI satellite data: contributions from individual states, urban areas, and landfills , Atmospheric chemistry and physics (2024)
• Inverse modeling of 2010–2022 satellite observations shows that inundation of the wet tropics drove the 2020–2022 methane surge , Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2024)
• Particulate matter from wildfire smoke in northern Colorado appears to be associated with conjunctivitis in dogs , Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (2024)