University of Virginia Professor Wins Prestigious PECASE Award from the Biden Administration

Sally Pusede, an assistant professor in the University of Virginia’s Department of Environmental Sciences, was honored by the outgoing Biden Administration with a 2025 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.

Photo by Dan Addison, Illustration by Avery Wagner

For her work in using atmospheric chemistry to address pressing environmental challenges, Sally Pusede, an assistant professor in the University of Virginia’s Department of Environmental Sciences, has been honored by the outgoing Biden Administration with a 2025 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). Established in 1996, the PECASE celebrates individuals who demonstrate exceptional potential for scientific innovation, technical leadership and societal impact through their research. The accolade is the highest honor given by the U.S. government to early-career scientists and engineers. Pusede was nominated for the award by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Research in Atmospheric Science

Pusede received the PECASE award for her ground-breaking research developing satellite remote sensing as a tool for understanding neighborhood-level air pollution variability and informing decision-making around air quality-related environmental justice issues. Her atmospheric chemistry lab was the first to evaluate space-based nitrogen dioxide observations at neighborhood levels to identify air pollution inequalities that affect communities of color in U.S. cities. Through a series of analytical advances on this topic, her lab has produced novel observational constraints on the benefits of policy interventions, such as controls on toxic diesel trucking emissions, and neighborhood-level air pollution inequalities by developing a broader, more dynamic understanding of air quality and atmospheric chemistry. The tools her lab developed are now used by researchers and practitioners across North America.

“Professor Pusede’s work epitomizes the values at the heart of a liberal arts education: commitment to discovery, responsibility for addressing societal challenges, and deep care for the well-being of our communities,” said Christa Acampora, Buckner W. Clay Professor of Philosophy and dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. “Her recognition with the PECASE award is a testament to her groundbreaking research and a reminder of how scientific innovation, guided by compassion and purpose, advances the human good. We are profoundly grateful for her contributions, which embody the transformative power of scholarship in action.”

Recognizing a Career of Impact

This is not the first time Pusede’s contributions have been recognized. In 2021, she received the NSF’s Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, which supports early-career faculty who have demonstrated potential to serve as academic role models and advance the scientific frontiers in their field. She also received the NASA New Investigator (Early Career) Program Award, and in 2022, she gave the American Geophysical Union Future Horizons in Climate Science Turco Lectureship, which recognizes significant interdisciplinary scientific research, discoveries, and advancements in climate science.

In addition to her research, Pusede co-directs the Repair Lab, an interdisciplinary environmental justice research lab and practitioner-in-residence program, with her collaborator Kimberly Fields in UVA’s Woodson Institute. The program supports environmental justice activists as they develop policy solutions to issues affecting their communities. The Repair Lab is currently engaged in a research project focused on coal dust air pollution in Hampton Roads, Virginia, with support formerly from UVA’s Karsh Institute for Democracy and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

“I’m grateful for the opportunity to have collaborated with many talented and passionate students and postdocs in this work at UVA,” Pusede said “Recent Ph.D. graduate Angelique Demetillo, now a postdoc at NASA Langley, and Class of 2024 graduate Isabella Dressel, currently a Churchill Fellow at the University of Cambridge and soon-to-be graduate student at MIT, made essential contributions to the recognized satellite work.”

Pusede also teaches courses in the Department of Environmental Sciences on air pollution, atmospheric chemistry, atmospheric science, and air pollution-related environmental justice issues.

“I am honored to receive the PECASE award,” said Pusede. “The recognition shows the value of analytical atmospheric chemistry and interdisciplinary collaboration in producing research based on environmental observations that is policy relevant. I am grateful to the students and researchers in my lab and my colleagues and partners in and outside of UVA for their generosity and collaboration, which has been instrumental in the work.”