Lucas RF Henneman, PI
Assistant Professor
George Mason University Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering
Welcome!
Welcome to the Health and Air Quality (HAQ) Lab website—I, Lucas Henneman, am an Environmental Engineer interested in how air quality and health are influenced by regulatory policies and climate change. I teach classes in air pollution, climate change, and environmental engineering systems. Take a look around and please don’t hesitate to reach out.
- Environmental policy
- Health effects of air quality interventions
- Air pollution modeling
- Regulatory accountability
- Big data applications
PhD in Environmental Engineering, 2017
Georgia Institute of Technology
MS in Environmental Engineering, 2014
Georgia Institute of Technology
BS in Environmental Engineering, 2012
Johns Hopkins University
Background
Our world is changing all the time. Some change is fast, some change is slow, and all change looks different across the world. Wielded appropriately, this change can be an awesome tool for learning more about our environment and our health.
I’m most interested in changes in our air quality—air pollution causes millions of deaths each year world-wide. Many countries have implemented regulations to curb this burden, and we can study these regulations using the Air Pollution Accountability Chain.
This framework describes how regulations impact emissions, air quality, personal dose/exposure, and ultimately public health. Though we can make measurements at each of these links, the relationships that are most informative for policymakers (blue portions of the arrows) are clouded by other factors (red portions).
I’m building a multi-disciplinary team that will advance research along the Air Pollution Accountability Chain. We’ll develop models and devise new analytical techniques to create evidence for continued improvements in envornmental policy at scales local to global. If you’re a prospective graduate student with strong analytical skills, please review my ongoing projects and recent papers and reach out.
People
Postdocs
Ting Zhang
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Students
Hoda Hallaji
PhD Student
Munshi Md Rasel
PhD Student
Shreya Guha
PhD Student
Sumaiya Hussain
PhD Student
Xiaorong Shan
PhD Student
Recent Publications
Projects
Public
In the news
- John Kerry cites recent publication in Science in call for no new coal plants
- Lucas Henneman and coauthors quoted on Science publication, including in the The New York Times and The Chicago Tribune
- Munshi Md Rasel wins Air & Waste Management Association scholarship for Environmental Management or Policy Research and Study Related to Air Quality (2023)
- Lucas Henneman quoted in an article titled, When a Coke Plant Closed in Pittsburgh, Cardiovascular ER Visits Plunged (Inside Climate News, Aug. 13, 2023)
- Walter A. Rosenblith New Investigator for 2021 announced (Health Effects Institute, March, 2022)
- Mason Engineer researcher investigates air pollution’s impact on health (VSExpress, Oct. 1, 2020)
Opinion pieces
- Pollution from coal power plants contributes to far more deaths than scientists realized, study shows (The Conversation, 23 November, 2023)
- Proposed power plant in Chesterfield County lands Virginia at a crossroads (Virginia Climate Center Blog, November 2023)
- Protecting ourselves and our families from wildfire pollution (Virginia Climate Center Blog co-authored with Jenna Krall, June 2023)
- INSIGHT: On Air Pollution, Eastern States Are Right to Point Fingers (Bloomberg Environment, Dec. 5, 2019)
- Air quality regulations worked in Atlanta! (and I’m glad we checked) (Medium, Apr. 19, 2018)
- Your climate, your health, and your government (Medium, Nov. 30, 2017)
- Breathing easy: the case for clean air (Medium, Aug. 30, 2017)