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Growing up in 1970s in the East Bay region of California, a short drive from San Francisco <br />and Berkeley, he was aware of the growing interest in the environment occurring all around <br />him but didn't see a future in it, at least not for him. <br />"I preferred the intellectual challenge of physics," he says. <br />The connection between physics and the environment, and basic and applied sciences, <br />didn't crystalize for him until he was an undesgaad at the University of California - Berkeley <br />and took part in a research project studying a deadly gas eruption in Lake Nyos, one of two <br />so- called "killer lakes" located in the central African nation of Cameroon. <br />In 1986, a large gas cloud erupted unexpectedly from volcanic Nyos, giving off large <br />amounts of carbon dioxide that suffocated more than 1,700 people in surrounding villages. <br />Shindell and the other members of the Berkeley team were tasked with explaining why the <br />eruption had occurred with no advance warning, and what could be done to improve <br />scientists' ability to predict similar eruptions in the future. <br />"Applying physics to the study of such an event intrigued me," he says. "It showed that <br />environmental applications were relevant and interesting." <br />After finishing his bachelor of arts in physics at Berkeley in 1988, he began doctoral studies <br />in physics at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and spent the summer of <br />1989 conducting research on fundamental physics at the nearby Brookhaven National Lab <br />synchrotron. <br />It was a life- changing experience. Just not in the way he anticipated <br />"It was fascinating from an intellectual perspective, but by summer's end I realized I didn't <br />want to spend the next few decades of my life doing something so esoteric," he says. "I <br />started looking for something more applied." <br />A group of other physicists at Stony Brook had recently begun exploring the complex <br />chemistry responsible for the ozone hole over Antarctica. Reviewing their work, Shindell <br />realized he could help shed light on what was going on by building a model that would help <br />the scientists better understand the measurements they were taking of ozone - depleting <br />chemicals in the atmosphere. He joined the team. <br />"Here was a chance to apply my work in way that had clear benefits to society and involved <br />travel," he says. "I was in!" <br />His newfound focus took him to Antarctica three times and northern Greenland twice and <br />became the basis for his doctoral thesis, for which he developed a photochemical model <br />that calculated changes in atmosphere chemistry by comparing measurements of ozone <br />depleters and ozone itself. <br />After graduating in 1995, he was hired by the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies at <br />Columbia University to integrate his atmospheric photochemistry model into a climate model <br />recently developed by NASA scientists. <br />"Back then, most climate models had no atmospheric chemistry whatsoever," he explains. <br />"Scientists knew ozone and other shorter -lived chemicals in the atmosphere affected <br />