Ben Murray is a Professor of Atmospheric Science (and Deputy Director of Research and Innovation) at the University of Leeds. Ben’s research is focused on the role atmospheric aerosol particles play in ice formation in clouds. 

What inspired you to co-develop the concept behind the Hub?

Our research in Leeds has shown that bioaerosols are a very important class of ice-nucleating particles in clouds. These ice nucleating particles are very important for defining cloud properties, but our ability to sample, identify and characterise them is extremely limited. The Hub provides scientists in Leeds with access to novel tools and technologies for bioaerosol detection that we can apply to tough atmospheric problems. 

Which collaborative opportunities are exciting you the most?

A great example of the application of exciting new technologies is recent work where we flew a lightweight electrostatic precipitator, developed by the University of Hertfordshire for defence applications, on a drone in Iceland.  This device was used to sample aerosol which we later analysed for its ice nucleating ability in our labs in Leeds.  This combination of unique technologies opens up the possibility of sampling atmospheric aerosol at altitude in a very flexible and cheap way. 

What motivated you to explore bioaerosol detection as part of your research?  

We started getting hints that bioaerosols are an important class of ice-nucleating particles during a field campaign in the Yorkshire countryside nearly a decade ago.  Since then we have shown that biogenic ice nucleating particles are very important in most locations we have visited around the world, from the North Pole to the Boreal forests of Finland and from New Mexico to Southern Ocean. However, we still can’t quantitatively explain their presence in the atmosphere. 

What are you most proud of in your research career?

I am proud of my team’s discovery that one group of minerals in desert dusts is responsible for desert dust’s ice nucleating ability.  This led to physically underpinned descriptions of ice nucleation in atmospheric models that have allowed us to model the global distribution of desert dust ice nucleating particles.  The biodetection technologies hub offers the possibility of making similarly profound discoveries in biological ice nucleation.