One Friday afternoon about seven years ago, while closing down an experiment, a post-doc student in the Ariya Atmospheric and Interfacial Chemistry Research Group at McGill made a wee mistake. The experiment? Investigating the reaction between ozone and an organic solution. The mistake? Oh, just leaving a few reaction-chamber valves and lasers open.

By Monday morning, a thick sludge of hungry bioaerosols – microscopic natural critters suspended in the air we breathe – had grown all over the lab just from feasting on the solution.

Parisa Ariya, the lab’s director, instantly recognized that over one short weekend, this sludge had completely revolutionized her field. Whereas the effect of bioaerosols on the chemistry of atmosphere and climate had not really been considered, "now," she explains “bioaerosols get a lot of attention. There are proposal sessions on bioaerosols in every major international conference.”

Of the now famous scientific goof that catapulted her research forward, Ariya says “It was a terrible mistake,” then jokes, “but let’s just say I didn’t fire him.”

Ariya studies forces of nature, but is also one herself. She is formidably intelligent, yet disarmingly approachable. She has two young sons, but still finds time to practice martial arts at a high level. With her youthful vigour and drive, you could easily mistake her for one of her students. And she speaks six languages, using five of them daily in a lab of doctoral and post-doctoral students from China, Iran, France, Egypt, Austria, Canada and the U.S.

Drawing on backgrounds in atmospheric chemistry, physics and microbiology, the group specializes in understanding the processes by which pollutants get into tropospheric water – oceans, clouds, rain, snow and ice. She clearly relishes her role as head of a research team. “The beauty of ideas,” she philosophizes, “is that they are not confined to one brain. Many people can examine them.”

Now, 10 years after her arrival at McGill, the Ariya Research Group encompasses three labs considered, to anyone in the know, state of the art. But Ariya’s transformative role in atmospheric science is a far cry from her unsettled early life.

Almost three decades ago, around the time scientists began worrying about global warming, Ariya’s family fled the Iranian revolution. They lived in seven countries before Ariya, at age 14, finally found a home in Canada.

Ariya did her Ph.D. at York, then went on to post-doctoral work in Germany with Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen, who first demonstrated how chemicals were destroying the ozone layer. A rising star, in 1998 Ariya turned down lucrative offers in the U.S. in hopes of returning to Eastern Canada. McGill came through with an attractive opportunity, plus, moving to Montreal, she said, “felt like coming home.”

Not long after arriving, she established Quebec’s first laboratory for atmospheric chemistry. Hers was among the first labs to show how deadly mercury gets trapped in and released from arctic ice. These findings qualified her to serve on U.N. research commissions, and she is the lead author of U.N.-mandated books and recommendation assignments.

Ariya’s main mission remains sorting out which chemical processes are the most significant in the fight against global warming. Her lab group concentrates on understanding these subtle processes in the hope of better controlling them.

For an academic, Ariya’s unconventional outlook on her mission matches her extraordinary journey to McGill. “A few years ago I decided that if I died today, who cares about the number of publications? I wanted to make sure that someone’s life was improved…That’s a question you always have to keep asking yourself as a scientist, what have you done with your life?”

So far, Ariya’s done plenty.