Julia Luongo, PhD

Julia is currently a Senior Air Quality Engineer in the Rules & Strategic Policy division at the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. 

Julia previously served as an Air Pollution Specialist in the Community Planning Section of the Office of Community Air Protection at the California Air Resources Board. The Office of Community Air Protection is responsible for the implementation of the Community Air Protection Program - the community-focused program established under AB 617 to more effectively reduce exposure to air pollution and preserve public health in communities disproportionately impacted by air pollution.

Julia began working in the field of air quality as a graduate student at the University of Colorado Boulder in Dr. Shelly Miller's group. Her research focused on indoor air quality, indoor air microbiome, infectious disease transmission and control, Ultraviolet Germicidal Irradiation technologies, and how building ventilation systems influence indoor air.

After receiving her PhD, Julia joined Ramboll's Air Quality and Climate Science group where her work shifted to outdoor air quality topics from a regulatory perspective. She gained experience in criteria air pollutant and greenhouse gas emissions assessments, air dispersion and regional modeling, and health risk assessments. Her interests led her to start Ramboll's microsensor initiative to keep up with rapidly emerging technologies in the air sensor space. Her work with sensors and air quality monitoring led her to work on various projects focused on technology reviews and monitoring program design.

After participating in Ramboll's Innovation Accelerator in 2018, Julia founded an internal startup called Shair that blended many passions that led her into the field of air quality to begin with. She sought to leverage her (and her wonderful team's) experience with air quality emissions inventories and modeling and blend it with the valuable information from high-density sensor networks to develop a vibrant and insightful air quality modeling and mapping tool to be used for education, advocacy, and policy for cleaner air in vulnerable communities. As the conversation around community air protection shifts from traditional regional approaches to more local approaches, Shair is designed to help answer the challenging localized questions faced when developing strategies to reduce air pollution burden.

In her free time you can find Julia enjoying the outdoors - some of her favorite hobbies include hiking, camping, biking, soccer, ultimate frisbee, and pickleball. She also enjoys playing board games and card games with friends.

Blog

Ph.D., University of Colorado Boulder | Mechanical Engineering with Air Quality Focus

M.S., University of Colorado Boulder | Mechanical Engineering

B.S., Swarthmore College | Engineering

Ramboll Shair Real-time Air Quality Modeling Platform (est. 2019)

Ramboll Shair Real-time Air Quality Mapping Platform (est. 2019)

Video spotlight of Julia (2019), Ramboll's Inviting Bright Minds Campaign

Video spotlight of Julia (2019), Ramboll's Inviting Bright Mids Campaign

Putting clean air in the hands of municipal leaders (2020), Published in American City & County

Users Can See San Francisco Air Quality in Real Time (June, 2020), Government Technology

Users can see San Francisco Air Quality in Real Time (2020), Government Technology

Is messaging one of the biggest challenges we currently face as air quality professionals? (2019) LinkedIn

Is messaging on of the biggest challenges we currently face as air quality professionals? (2019), LinkedIn article

How the Public is Pushing Cities for Better Air Quality with CIMCON Lighting & the Ramboll Group (Podcast, 2019)

How the Public is Pushing Cities for Better Air Quality (Podcast, 2019)

Select Works & Media

Introducing a new feature: Shair Source Apportionment (Medium)

What is Shair? Helping cities clean the air. (Medium)

Can sensor data add value during wildfires? (2019), AWMA Impacts of Wildfires on Air Quality and Health Conference

Can sensor data add value during wildfires? (2019)

Diversity of DNA and RNA viruses in indoor air as assessed via metagenomic sequencing (2018), Environmental Science & Technology

Schrödinger’s microbes: Tools for distinguishing the living from the dead in microbial ecosystems (2017), Microbiome

Microbial analyses of airborne dust collected from dormitory rooms predict the sex of occupants (2016), Indoor Air

Ultraviolet germicidal coil cleaning: Decreased surface microbial loading and resuspension of cell clusters (2016), Building and Environment

Ultraviolet germicidal coil cleaning: Impact on heat transfer effectiveness and static pressure drop (2016), Building and Environment

Contribution of human‐related sources to indoor volatile organic compounds in a university classroom (2015), Indoor Air

Contribution of human-related sources to indoor volatile organic compounds in a university classroom (2015), Indoor Air

Select Works & Media

Publications and Op-Eds