This Q&A features one of the winners of the 2025 Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) competition, a university-wide challenge that invites graduate students to present their research in just three minutes—using only one slide and no jargon. The goal? To make complex research accessible, engaging, and inspiring to a broad audience.
In this spotlight, you’ll hear from Katie Moloney, a UBC Civil Engineering graduate student whose research is shedding light on an emerging and often overlooked source of pollution: tire wear particles. Her work explores how this invisible pollutant travels through urban air, transforms chemically, and may impact lung health—bridging environmental engineering and public health in powerful new ways.
Katie Moloney
PhD student
Research area: Environmental System Engineering
Campus: Vancouver
Can you share a brief summary of your research and why it’s important?
My research focuses on a pollutant called tire wear particles (TWP), or small rubber particles which are created via tire abrasion while driving a vehicle. Globally, tire wear particles are one of the largest sources of microplastic release. Despite this, the impacts of tire wear pollution remain poorly understood. Recent research has shown that individuals living in urban areas are at high risk of exposure to tire wear via inhalation. My work aims to understand the chemical composition of tire wear particulate, assess how these chemicals transform in the atmosphere, and understand how this pollution may adversely affect lung health. This work is important because it affects a huge portion of the human population! Our urban environments are ripe with pollution and understanding the effects is critical.
What inspired you to pursue this topic, and how do you see your research making an impact in your field or beyond?
Environmental engineering and public health are deeply interconnected topics, yet they are often studied in isolation. I began my research journey as an undergraduate student, focusing on heavy metals in drinking water. This piqued my interest in toxic contaminants and their impact on human health, and I became increasingly interested in other avenues of exposure to harmful chemicals. Through my research, I aim to understand the chemical makeup of tire wear pollution and bridge the gap to public health by unpacking how these chemicals can adversely affect human lung health. Ultimately, I hope my work encourages a shift towards more integrated approaches to research in environmental engineering and public health.
What was the biggest challenge in distilling your research into a three-minute presentation?
I recently began my PhD and am currently in the project-definition stage of my research. There is limited understanding of tire wear pollution, and I have been working through the learning curve of transitioning from water quality to air quality research. I have struggled to refine my research scope given the limitless unknowns in environmental research and limited time and feasibility within a dissertation. Refining even further to explain these potentials in a three-minute format was that much more difficult. Strangely, I found it refreshing to be constrained to such a short format, and I was able to focus on my strongest interest, understanding human health, during my presentation.
What was your favorite part of participating in the 3MT competition, and what did you learn from the experience?
I enjoyed learning about other research happening in our department and was, as always, astounded by the sheer breadth of research occurring within our department. Civil Engineering encompasses a huge umbrella of research topics but ultimately, I was excited to see how each presenter had an interest in understanding and improving our lived environment.
What’s next for you and your research? Any exciting developments on the horizon?
About four more years of research! I am just beginning my research and am excited to start up collaborations with other groups on campus as I get the ball rolling!