About us
We study air pollution exchange across the building envelope. We spend the majority of our lives indoors, so understanding the composition and chemical transformations of the air we breathe indoors is critical for understanding and ultimately mitigating our indoor chemical exposures. We are interested in how outdoor-derived pollution from varied sources enters an indoor space and chemically transforms, as well as how indoor-derived pollution impacts the surrounding outdoor environment. Learn more about the Ditto group’s research.
Join the group
Interested in joining the group?
If you are a prospective undergraduate: please reach out to learn more about independent study opportunities.
If you are a prospective graduate student: please reach out and describe your background, future research interests, and connections to our group. Note that our Ph.D. application usually becomes available in September and the deadline is in December of any given year. We encourage students with broad interests in the indoor environment to apply to WashU EECE and work with us – we think about a range of topics related to environmental chemistry, human exposure, and applications of mass spectrometry.
Recent news
January 8, 2026: Welcome to Sadman and Oishi, who joined the lab as 1st year Ph.D. students in the fall! Other highlights from the fall semester include a trip to AAAR in Buffalo, NY (Jenna, Yingxi, and Kamal), and a trip to AGU in New Orleans, LA (Jenna gave an invited talk).
August 30, 2025: Excited to embark on a new collaboration with the Hegarty lab at Case Western focused on understanding the role of microbes and their volatile emissions in indoor environments! You can read more about our new NSF Environmental Engineering grant here.
August 1, 2025: It’s been a busy summer in the lab. Jenna received the EECE Chair’s Outstanding Teaching Award and was named an Environmental Science: Processes and Impacts: outstanding peer reviewer for 2024! We met up for our summer tradition: group ice cream at Clementine’s. Kira also presented a poster about her research at the Center for the Environment summer research symposium!
May 25, 2025: Congratulations to Minye and Yunfei who passed their Ph.D. qualifying exams this month! Congratulations to Nora and Anthony who completed successful undergraduate research projects this semester! Finally, welcome to the group Kamal (WashU-IIT Bombay Joint MS student) and Kira (Center for the Environment Summer Undergraduate Research student)!
December 21, 2024: Our Fall 2024 lab highlights: Riley Benko completed a successful rotation in our lab this fall! Congrats to Yingxi Lu, who passed her thesis proposal defense in December! Our new GC has arrived in the lab and is awaiting setup! Jenna participated in the Engineering the Future podcast!
September 23, 2024: Welcome to our new Ph.D. students Minye and Yunfei!
July 7, 2024: Summer research is in full swing! Welcome to Siddhi and Lucas, two new undergraduate students on our team. Also, huge congratulations to Kinjal who has completed her master’s thesis!
April 18, 2024: We are excited to be diving into the chemistry of house dust with a new NSF Atmospheric Chemistry program grant. Learn more here!
October 25, 2023: It has been an exciting month! Not only did our PTR-MS arrive, but our new lab space is also now ready! We are excited to start moving in.
July 18, 2023: A belated welcome to our research team members who have joined the group in the past few months: Yingxi (as a Ph.D. student), Kinjal (as an M.S. student), and Frankie, Dillon, and Estele (as undergraduate researchers).
May 18, 2023: We are excited and grateful to receive the McKelvey Collaboration Initiation Grant!
May 1, 2023: Check out our new paper (from the University of Toronto) in Environmental Science: Processes and Impacts! Learn more about emissions of gases and particles in a commercial kitchen here.
February 1, 2023: Lab setup is underway! Welcome to undergraduate team members Jordyn, Max, and Frankie!