I have had a varied research history, starting with graduate work in astronomy, followed by five years of active research in magnetospheric physics (culminating in an invited review article on magnetospheric magnetic field models in the Reviews of Geophysics in 1994), to more graduate work in space physics, then atmospheric science. My Ph.D. and postdoctoral research included investigations of the heterogeneous uptake of nitrate and sulfate on coarse sea salt and dust aerosols. This work led to my current research interests in the formation and growth of secondary organic aerosols (SOA). Here at the Climate Change Research Center, I am actively involved in SOA modeling adding chemistry based on various chamber studies to our gas-phase mechanism and partitioning module. We then evaluate the importance of this expanded chemistry by including it in regional three-dimensional models. I am also involved in analyzing data from our Thompson Farm sampling site proton transfer reaction mass spectrometer (PTR-MS) which measures oxygenated volatile organic carbons.