Greg Carmichael

University of Iowa professor Greg Carmichael co-founded the Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research (CGRER) in 1990.

Carmichael, along with co-director Jerry Schnoor, stages outreach efforts, allocates seed grants, organizes symposium, advises graduate students, and performs general oversight for CGRER. He also makes yearly budgeting, managerial, and promotional decisions for the Center.

Carmichael holds the esteemed Karl Kammermeyer professorship of chemical and biochemical engineering at the UI. He holds secondary appointments in civil and environmental engineering & applied mathematical and computational sciences. Since 2002, he has acted as Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Research for the College of Engineering.

For over 30 years, Carmichael has explored how humans impact the environment — and vice versa — as a member of the College of Engineering. His specific research interests include black carbon, air quality and chemical weather forecasting, and air pollution throughout Asia.

Carmichael operates air-quality projects across the globe with a team of rotating graduate students. In the last 15 years, his group has conducted air quality forecasting field experiments in Chile, California, the Arctic, and Beijing. His research troupe performed this last assignment for the 2008 Olympic Games.

Carmichael predicts air quality like a meteorologist predicts weather — through a complex series of computer modeling techniques. For over a decade, he has held workshops on air quality forecasting for the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a subsidiary of the United Nations. Seminar locations have included Mexico City, Lima, and San Paulo.

The bulk of Carmichael’s international research occurs in China. Carmichael first studied the region’s air quality in 1983. Within a decade, he became one of the first scientists to successfully track the intercontinental transport of air pollution. His research revealed how wind can carry pollutants from one continent to another, a finding with major geopolitical implications. He continues to explore these issues for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Carmichael’s path began at Iowa State University, where he earned a B.S. in chemical engineering in 1974. The following year, graduated with an M.S. in chemical engineering at the University of Kentucky. He earned his chemical engineering Ph.D. in 1979 at the same institute.

Chemical engineering has always attracted Carmichael for one simple reason. As he puts it, "Everything has chemical origins, which is why chemical engineering is our best hope for solving environmental problems."