Akua Asa-Awuku Selected for NIH HEW Scholars Program

Akua Asa-Awuku standing before the Jeong H. Kim Engineering Building.

Akua Asa-Awuku, a professor in chemical & biomolecular engineering and associate dean in the A. James Clark School of Engineering, was selected for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Health and Extreme Weather (HEW) Scholars Program.

The program brings scientists from academia and other non-federal spaces working at the intersection of extreme weather, natural disasters, and health, into NIH institutes, centers, and offices to share their knowledge and expertise with staff to build HEW research capacity at NIH. Asa-Awuku will be working with the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to study the links between environmental and health data.

Her research currently focuses on the fate, transport, and transformation of aerosols and emerging pollutants, including how they move through indoor and outdoor environments, interact with water, and respond to changing meteorological conditions. These processes are central to understanding health risks from extreme weather because aerosols often serve as the exposure pathway connecting events such as wildfires, smoke episodes, extreme precipitation, and changing rainfall dynamics to downstream respiratory and cardiopulmonary outcomes.

“Joining HEW Scholars gives me the opportunity to work alongside cutting-edge NIH researchers, exchange new ideas, and collaborate in a space where the health impacts of extreme weather are becoming an increasingly urgent part of our evolving world," she said.

In the summer of 2026, Asa-Awuku’s research lab published a study documenting the presence of a chemical component, named “aeruginosin,” in the wildfire plumes that traveled from Alberta, Canada down to the East Coast in 2023. Her air quality study, which was conducted by collecting samples in College Park, MD during and after the air pollution episode spanning June 6–8 of the same year, found the airborne chemical that is associated with toxic blooms with potential health effects.

Her work is well positioned to drive the translation of atmospheric sciences into actionable health research, especially for populations significantly impacted by extreme weather events. Her goal is to translate this data into models that can better identify at-risk populations, improve monitoring strategies, and guide interventions before, during, and after extreme weather events.

Published November 13, 2026