SEALab

05/15/2026

SEALab wishes Vasilisa and Nick a very happy birthday. Both of them are our microplastic specialists.

05/14/2026

We had such a great time at the Spring 2026 Undergraduate Research Program (URP) Research Fair meeting so many undergraduate students interested in the work happening in our lab! It was especially exciting to connect with students from a wide range of engineering backgrounds, including civil, mechanical, and electrical engineering, and see how our research resonated across different disciplines and interests.
At the fair, Myra and Nouh shared our lab’s wildfire related research projects, while Nina and Lisa shared our work on microplastics. We loved getting to talk with everyone who stopped by our table, asked thoughtful questions, and shared their curiosity and enthusiasm for research!

05/08/2026

SEALab had the opportunity to present our work on passive air samplers for airborne microplastic monitoring during the Air Sensors International Conference this week!

Our passive air samplers were deployed across Los Angeles during the 2025 fires and identified that airborne microplastic deposition could be 5-15x higher during a wildland urban interface (WUI) fire compared to non-fire periods.

Irena Pavlovic, along with Karina Rahadian, Vasilisa Kellogg, John Perna (UC Riverside), Nathan Lu (CAP.LA), Lawrence Tran (‘25) and dedicated undergraduate volunteers- Vyom, Nick, Kyan, and Shanjita, have worked together on this research to improve our understanding of airborne microplastic transport and what this means in a changing climate where WUI fires are becoming increasingly common.

05/02/2026

We had the opportunity to present our work at the Southern California Civil & Environmental Engineering Research Symposium this past week. It was great to see the range of research happening across civil and environmental engineering and to connect with other students and researchers in the space.

Karina Rahadian and Max Finnegan presented their work on how stormwater flow and particle properties affect microplastics resuspension in stormwater control measures, highlighting how SCMs can act as a secondary source of pollution. Just as exciting, Vasilisa Kellogg, along with Nick Schick, Kyan Nguyen, and Vyom Vidyarthi, presented important research on microplastic release and resuspension from oral care products.

Always proud to see our undergraduate researchers sharing their work!

04/24/2026

04/22/2026

Happiest birthday to one of SEALab’s most loyal volunteers— Diego Contreras! He never fails to bring good cheer and a smile to our faces. This is someone who is friends with everyone, there aren't enough words to describe how sweet he is and his impact on the lab. We are excited to see your progress and journey in the lab!

04/20/2026

Congratulations, Lillian Ott, one of the graduating Sealab undergraduate researchers for being awarded the DoD National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship! Lillian, a biochemistry major, has been working in our lab to understand PFAS accumulation and transport in stormwater BMPs and proposed how to examine their removal and transformation based on the design of BMPs. Her proposal was selected to receive this prestigious fellowship during her PhD among a pool of 5615 applications this year. She was also one of the honourable mention list for NSF GRFP fellowship. We are so proud of her and wish her the best for her PhD or graduate study in Berkeley!

04/14/2026

Congratulations, Karina and Vasilisa, two SEALab undergraduate researchers, for being awarded with the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF GRFP), for their research proposals for MS studies on microplastic transport via stormwater and wind during wildfires, respectively. They are minor in environmental engineering at and have been working with SEALab for more than a year. This is very prestigious scholarship that a student from STEM measure can apply during their senior year. If selected, it covers the tuition and stipend for MS (2 years) or PhD (3 years). Nationally less than 2600 students get out of many applications. This year 16 UCLA current undergrads got the award of which 9 are from . Congratulations to all those who have applied during undergrads as it’s a chance worth taking because there is nothing to lose. Beyond undergrad, one can only have one chance during first year of their grad study to apply! We are super proud that each year one SEALab undergrad has been getting this award. This year we have two!

04/07/2026

How do the bioswale or wetland capture microplastics from stormwater runoff? And how do the captured microplastics leave the system during overflow conditions? Do microplastic type (size, shape and density) affect how they retain or move within the system? These are some of the questions Karina, one of the undergraduate researchers in SEALab, is asking. She had designed the bench top model to do this experiment and will complete the work by the end of this month, and then write the publication based on her findings. This is amazing to have an undergraduate student lead a study and eventually publish a paper in a peer reviewed journal. We are so happy to have Karina leading the way along with a few other undergrad students in various project. Today Maxwell (PhD student) and Nick (undergrad) were assisting Karina during her experiment. Team work makes the entire experiment more fun and easy to learn.

03/31/2026

First day of Spring quarter. A good day to have lunch together with the wildfire team! We look forward to wrapping the soil testing work by end of April!