Nusrat Jung, an Assistant Professor in the Lyles School of Civil and Construction Engineering at Purdue University, with a courtesy appointment in the School of Sustainability Engineering and Environmental Engineering, has earned a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award, NSF’s most prestigious honor for early-career faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education, and their integration.

Personal care products release chemicals into indoor air during normal use. Those chemicals stick to surfaces, form small airborne particles, and move through ventilation systems into outdoor air. How product usage, heat, and building operation govern this behavior is the central question of Jung’s CAREER project, entitled “Characterizing Chemical Emissions and Multiphase Transformations from Personal Care Product Use in Indoor Environments.” It is curiosity-driven research at the intersection of indoor air chemistry, aerosol physics, and building systems engineering.

The research combines controlled laboratory experiments with full-scale testing at the Purdue zEDGE Test House, a one-of-a-kind net-zero energy residential testbed that Jung designed and leads. Using high-resolution, real-time mass spectrometry and advanced aerosol instrumentation, the project will generate datasets on how chemicals behave across gas and particle phases under realistic building conditions, informing AI-assisted models of chemical movement and ventilation control with direct implications for building system design.

Jung’s lab has produced some of the field’s most consequential findings. A 2023 study delivered the first real-time characterization of cyclic volatile methyl siloxane emissions during hair styling, identifying a previously unknown source of chemical emissions in residential buildings. The study became the most-read article in Environmental Science and Technology (ES&T) and received international media attention. A 2025 follow-up study in ES&T found that a typical heat-based hair styling session releases upward of 100,000 nanoparticles per cubic centimeter into the breathing zone, concentrations comparable to standing in dense highway traffic. “The number of nanoparticles inhaled from using typical, store-bought hair care products was far greater than we ever anticipated,” said Jung. The findings were featured on NPR’s Science Friday.

Jung’s NSF CAREER Award also supports a rigorous education program: research findings feed directly into Purdue’s architectural engineering curriculum, undergraduate students tackle real-world air quality challenges through the Global Air Quality Trekkers EPICS team advised by Jung, and the mobile zEDGE platform brings the science to the public through Purdue’s Grandparents University Program, air quality demonstrations at the West Lafayette Public Library, and a study abroad program in Finland.

Beyond Purdue, Jung serves on the Early Career Editorial Board of Indoor Environments (Elsevier) and the Editorial Board of Discover Atmosphere (Springer Nature) and was recently elected Treasurer-Elect of the Board of Directors of the International Society of Indoor Air Quality and Climate (ISIAQ). She has published 31 peer-reviewed journal articles accumulating more than 1,450 citations, with an h-index of 19, and is a co-author of ASHRAE Standard 228-2023 on net-zero carbon buildings.

In 2025, Jung received the Harold Munson Outstanding Teacher Award, the Lyles School of Civil and Construction Engineering's highest teaching honor. She has also received the Mary Ann Zimmerman Purdue Civil Engineering Innovation Award (2025) and the Ross Judson Buck Outstanding Counselor Award (2023), and has appeared on Purdue’s Recognizing Outstanding Engineering Teachers list more than five times.

Jung earned her D.Sc. in mechanical engineering from Aalto University in Finland and conducted research at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, before joining Purdue’s Lyles School of Civil and Construction Engineering as an Assistant Professor in 2021.

About the NSF CAREER Award: the Faculty Early Career Development Program is NSF’s most prestigious award in support of early-career faculty. It recognizes individuals who have demonstrated the potential to serve as academic role models and to lead advances in research and education within their fields.