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Parisa Ariya is a professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and the Chemistry Department at McGill University in Montreal.\\xa0 Dr. Ariya works mostly in atmospheric chemistry, but she\\u2019s also done a good deal of work with bioaerosols and airborne microorganisms.\\xa0 She\\u2019ll deliver a talk at the ASM General Meeting in May titled Bioaerosols: Impact on Physics and Chemistry of the Atmosphere.

Bioaerosols \\u2013 microscopic clumps of microorganisms and organic debris \\u2013 arise through any of a number of mechanisms.\\xa0 The scientific community has come full circle on the idea of microorganisms in the atmosphere, according to Dr. Ariya.\\xa0 Back in the early days of microbiology it was widely recognized that the air is full of living, breathing microbes, but once our understanding of atmospheric chemistry and physics matured, the roles of microbes in atmospheric processes were marginalized.\\xa0 Thanks, in part, to Dr. Ariya\\u2019s work, the activities and functions of bioaerosols are getting new attention.\\xa0 We now know cells in bioaerosol particles can actively metabolize materials at interfaces, and Dr. Ariya says some of her future work will look into the details of these transformation processes and how they impact the atmosphere.

In this interview, Dr. Merry Buckley talks with Dr. Ariya about how bioaerosols are formed, what they\\u2019re doing, and why it isn\\u2019t a good idea to use bioaerosols to manage the weather.