Alumni Excellence Awards: Research Award Recipient Courtney Grimes Ph.D '21

Around the country, highways, ports, railyards and airports produce millions of metric tons of dangerous emissions such as particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide.

Low-income communities and communities of color near the infrastructure are disproportionately impacted by the toxins, reports the EPA, with residents facing a higher risk of asthma, reduced lung function, cardiovascular disease, and death.

Courtney Grimes ’21 is rallying such areas – called environmental justice communities – to advocate for their own health and welfare.

“It’s great to see citizens rise up and take matters into their own hands,” she says. “And I get to be involved and walk alongside them.”

She’s an atmospheric scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) in Washington, D.C., where Grimes is helping to advocate for populations that long have lacked a voice in the conversation.

“The rise of community-led environmental justice efforts and increased public discourse on climate change and air quality are signs of progress,” Grimes says. “There will be bumps along the road, but I am optimistic.”

She’s working with communities in the Bay Area and Houston, for example, to help residents advocate for themselves by collecting and analyzing air quality data, and then pushing for regulatory changes. There are new challenges, she notes. Climate change has led to an increase in wildfires, whose “particle pollution” harms the heart and lungs.

Grimes current focus is on airport emissions near residential neighborhoods. While she doesn’t conduct fieldwork, she collaborates with EDF’s policy team to analyze air quality data and formulate recommendations to cut aircraft emissions – from promoting more research in fuels to more sustainable aircraft design.

Grimes fell in love with science while watching “Bill Nye the Science Guy” as a kid growing up in Long Island, New York. “I remember doing little experiments such as growing beans in a sandwich bag and watching them grow on the windowsill, and dissecting a cow’s eye in elementary school,” she says. “I would constantly check out books from the school’s library on science-related topics ranging from zoology to black holes. I was hooked.”

After earning an undergraduate chemistry degree in chemistry at Hofstra University, Grimes enrolled at Maryland, where her doctoral work focused on aerosols and other pollutants in the Baltimore-Washington area, and in New York City. She also studied the movement of particulates originating in China.

Grimes was a 2021 student speaker at the online commencement ceremony of the College of Computer, Mathematical & Natural Sciences. The event was in the midst of Covid-19, and Grimes took the occasion to urge her classmates to never give up hope.

Away from her daily roles, Grimes is a mentor to young Black girls considering careers in STEM fields. She took part in a nonprofit program called Sister Mentors, in which she and other women of color pursuing doctorates provided information and moral support to young women considering their professional goals. The mentors shared some undeniable realities. It is often the case that Grimes is the only Black scientist at academic gatherings.

“Something my family has always said is ‘keep on keeping on,’” Grimes says. “It can be challenging, but I persevere and never give up because I’m passionate about climate change, air quality issues, and environmental justice.”