Prof. Pfrang’s research is mainly in the area of gas-phase and heterogeneous atmospheric chemistry focussing on the fate of atmospheric aerosols and their impacts on air quality and climate change. He is also studying reactions of initiators of atmospheric oxidation (in particular ozone and nitrate radicals) with volatile organic compounds (VOCs), e.g. stress-induced plant emissions. Experimental studies mainly developing levitation, monolayer, X-ray & neutron scattering techniques are complemented by computational work predicting the kinetic behaviour of species of atmospheric importance (e.g. co-developing the aerosol models K2–SUB, KM–SUB, KM–GAP and most recently the modelling framework MultilayerPy). 

Prof. Pfrang is also aiming to link atmospheric chemistry to related research topics in meteorology, environmental & plant sciences to advance the understanding of the urban environment with a recent focus on indoor air quality.

Christian Pfrang studied chemistry at the TU Munich, University of Oxford, and FU Berlin before his DPhil in Physical Chemistry with Prof. Richard P. Wayne at the University of Oxford. Following a stint at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and a Leverhulme Visiting Fellowship at Royal Holloway University of London, Prof. Pfrang took up a tenure-track RCUK Academic Fellowship at the University of Reading in 2007 before becoming Lecturer and Associate Professor of Physical & Atmospheric Chemistry. In 2016, Prof. Pfrang was a Visiting Professor at the University of Lille (France). In 2018, Prof. Pfrang moved to a Senior Lecturer post in the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Birmingham, where he was promoted to Reader and then Professor of Atmospheric Science while retaining his link to Reading as a Senior Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of Meteorology. Prof. Pfrang’s core expertise is atmospheric chemistry of aerosols, developing novel experimental and modelling tools often involving large-scale facilities, but he also has research interests in indoor air quality, urban greening, and wider implications of air pollution and climate change.