Galen Hon recently joined the Port of Tacoma as Environmental Program Technician. In this position, Hon is helping the Port and its customers understand how their operations affect air quality and develop strategies to reduce emissions in the future.

Hon is also working with the Puget Sound Maritime Air Forum – a voluntary association of private and public maritime organizations, ports, air agencies and other parties with operational or regulatory responsibilities related to maritime industry air quality impacts. In the coming months, Hon’s work on the Puget Sound Maritime Emission Inventory will help establish baseline information on a number of air pollutants and their sources within the greater Puget Sound area.

“Galen brings the Port expertise in the study of air emissions and a successful background of helping organizations find ways to reduce their environmental impacts,” said Lou Paulsen, the Port’s Senior Director of Facilities Development. “In the short time Galen has been with us, he has already proven to be a remarkable asset to the Port and our customers.”

Before joining the Port, Hon worked as a staff engineer for Brookhaven National Laboratory. During four years with Brookhaven, Hon worked with a team of engineers to design, implement, and manage complex environmental research systems. Among these were Department of Energy’s “Free-Air Carbon Dioxide Enrichment” (FACE) facility in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and a project with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama to develop a prototype system to study the effect of elevated carbon dioxide levels on tropical vegetation.

Hon earned Bachelors Degrees in Humanities and Civil Engineering from Seattle University (1997) and a Masters Degree in Civil Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University (2003). His graduate research focused on particulate matter in urban areas.