I am currently undertaking a PhD student at 🌍the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, The University of Manchester, UK, supervised by Dr. Zhonghua Zheng (Assistant Professor in Data Science & Environmental Analytics), Chair Professor David Topping (Professor of Digital Environment, Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute), and Chair Professor Hugh Coe (Professor of Atmospheric Composition). I also serve as a reviewer for the ES&T Air and Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres (JGRA)

🔬 About My Research

My research combines multi-scale numerical modeling (from particle-resolved to global) with machine learning to quantify the impact of atmospheric aerosols (Black carbon and micro/nanoplastics) on climate, covering both Direct Radiative Effect and Cloud Interactions.

Key Methodologies:

• 🌍 Multi-Scale Numerical Modeling: Utilizing Particle-Resolved Models, Cloud Parcel Models, and Global Models (CESM, GEOS-Chem) for comprehensive atmospheric simulation.
• 🤖 Machine Learning Integration: Applying Machine Learning (ML), Deep Learning (DL), and Active Learning (AL) to enhance environmental predictions.
• ⚙️ Impact Areas: Focused on quantifying the climatic forcing of high-impact aerosols, including Black Carbon (BC) and Atmospheric Micro/Nanoplastics (AMNPs).

🔥 News

• 2025.10： 🏆🏆 Honored to receive Aerosol Society Doctoral Student Award 2025
• 2025.09： 🎉🎉 Our review paper, “A Review of Atmospheric Micro/Nanoplastics: Insights into Source and Fate for Modelling Studies”, focusing on AMNP emission sources and environmental fate and their implications for global modelling 🌐, has just been published and featured by The University of Manchester
• 2025.06:  🏆🏆 I am happy to be one of important contributors of The University of Manchester Open Research Award 2025. This award recognises individuals and teams who have made significant contributions to Open Research at Manchester (awarded one for each year).
• 2025.05:  🎉🎉 Excited to present my work at EGU 2025: “Integrating Simulations and Observations: A Foundation Model Approach to Aerosol Mixing State Index Estimation”
• 2025.04:  🎉🎉 My first PhD paper, “Integrating Simulations and Observations: A Foundation Model Approach to Aerosol Mixing State Index Estimation”, has been published. We propose a machine learning (deep learning) foundation model using pre-training (on particle-resolved simulation data) and fine-tuning (with limited observations/measurements) to estimate aerosol mixing states under real-world conditions. Grateful to all co-authors, editors, and reviewers for their support.

🎓 Educations

• 2023.09 - now, PhD Student, Environmental Science, The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
• 2018.02 - 2021.02, MS (Distinction), Environmental Engineering, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
• 2013.09 - 2017.06, BEng, Environmental Engineering, Shandong University, Jinan, China

📦 Software and Toolkits

pmcpy: A Python package for PartMC post-processing

Zhonghua Zheng, Fei Jiang

• Processed simulation output files (NetCDF format) from PartMC-MOSAIC for particle-resolved analysis.
• Performed particle-level CCN activation calculations using κ-Köhler theory to assess cloud condensation nuclei activity under varying supersaturation conditions.
• Simulated and calculated aerosol optical properties, including absorption and scattering coefficients, based on particle composition and mixing state.

💼 Working Experience and Activities

• 2025 - present: Python Package Developer (pmcpy) - Added optical and cloud microphysics analysis capabilities to the PartMC output processing pipeline
• 2025.03 - present: Coordinator for the Centre for Atmospheric Science (CAS) Seminar series (monthly), The University of Manchester, UK.

• 2021.06 - 2023.08, Project manager, Shanghai Electric Environmental Protection Group, Shanghai, China.

  • Responsibilities include full-cycle on-site project management, from process design to construction implementation.
  • Main focus: Process design for domestic and pharmaceutical wastewater treatment, anaerobic equipment design, and commissioning.
  • Executed projects:
    • Fuzhou Pharmaceutical Wastewater EPC Project (4 million RMB scale);
    • Inner Mongolia Pharmaceutical Wastewater EPC Project (20 million RMB scale).

👐 Volunteering

• Served as a peer reviewer for the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres (JGRA), EST&Air, Soft Matter, and Nature Communications.
• 2025.05.28: Support for the Urban Climate Resilience Workshop at The University of Manchester.
• 2025.03: Support for the alumni panel event at The University of Manchester.
• 2024.02: Assistance of the exchange program of undergraduate students from the School of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Peking University, China

📖 Teaching Experiment

• 2025.09 - 2025.12: Teaching Assistance (TA) for DATA70121 - Statistics and Machine Learning, The University of Manchester, UK.
• 2025.08: Teaching Assistance (TA) for the undergraduate student exchange program between the School of Earth Sciences, Zhejiang University, China, and The University of Manchester, UK.
• 2025.01 - 2025.06: Teaching Assistance (TA) for EART11200 - The Natural Scientist’s Toolkit, The University of Manchester, UK.
• 2025.01 - 2025.06: Teaching Assistance (TA) for EART60702 - Earth and Environmental Data Science, The University of Manchester, UK.
• 2024.08: Teaching Assistance (TA) for the undergraduate student exchange program between the School of Earth Sciences, Zhejiang University, China, and The University of Manchester, UK.
  • Topic: Emulator development using AutoML with a case study on aerosol mixing state prediction

💬 Oral and Poster

Invited Talks

• Integrating Simulations and Observations: A Foundation Model Approach to Aerosol Mixing State Index Estimation.
  • 2025.07.28 - University of Science and Technology of China (USTC)

Conference Presentations

• Integrating Simulations and Observations: A Foundation Model Approach to Aerosol Mixing State Index Estimation.
  • 2025.09 - Oral & Poster - UK Atmospheric Chemistry Conference 2025, York, UK
  • 2025.04 - Oral - European Geosciences Union (EGU25), Vienna, Austria
  • 2024.11 - Poster - Annual Aerosol Science Conference 2024, York, UK
  • 2024.09 - Oral - NERC digital gathering 2024, Manchester, UK

🎖 Honors and Awards

• 2025.10 Aerosol Society Doctoral Student Award 2025
• 2025.06 The University of Manchester Open Research Award 2025

📝 Publications

• Jiang, F., Gao, C., Chan, A.W.H. et al. (2025). A Review of Atmospheric Micro/Nanoplastics: Insights into Source and Fate for Modelling Studies. Curr Pollution Rep.
  • featured by The University of Manchester
• Jiang, F., Zheng, Z., Coe, H., Healy, R. M., Poulain, L., Gros, V., … & Riemer, N. (2025). Integrating Simulations and Observations: A Foundation Model for Estimating the Aerosol Mixing State Index. ACS ES&T Air.