Sloan Foundation’s Indoor Environment Symposium at Indoor Air 2014

Sloan Symposium at Indoor Air 2014

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Program on Microbiology of the Built Environment has awarded a grant to Indoor Air 2014, the 13th International Conference on Indoor Air Quality and Climate, to be held in Hong Kong from July 7-12, 2014.

Paraphrasing a quote on the conference web site from the Indoor Air journal, ‘The interaction between microbial communities and building environments needs far greater attention. (paraphrased from Corsi et al. Indoor Air 2012; 22: 171-172.)

The 2014 Sloan Symposium follows the first symposium on built environment microbiology, held at Indoor Air 2011, Austin, which resulted in the drafting of a research agenda that was published in the Indoor Air journal.

The symposium addresses two major objectives of the Microbiology of the Built Environment program of the Sloan Foundation: to build a national, multidisciplinary community by establishing a network of scientists working on these issues, and to convince federal funding agencies to include research on the indoor environment in their research plans by developing a compelling, widely-accepted research agenda.

The objectives of the Sloan Symposium at Indoor Air 2014 are to provide a unique platform to build a multidisciplinary international community by establishing a network of scientists working on built environment microbiology; to develop a future international agenda for promoting further studies on microbiology in the built environment; and to attract young researchers into the field of built environment and microbiology

Activities
3 Technical Sessions — Abstracts in built environment microbiology are now invited. Submissions can be submitted on www.indoorair2014.org. Choose topic A3, D3 and D4. More sessions will be planned as necessary to accommodate accepted abstracts of relevance to the Sloan Foundation’s program and the interests of the indoor air scientific and professional community around the world.

There will be one Sloan Workshop on Microbiology of the Built Environment — Future research international agenda on microbiology of the built environment with an emphasis on gene sequencing methods and integration of building science into ME studies. Chairman of the workshop: Mr Hal Levin.

There will be one Sloan Industry Forum – The industry forum will focus on new gene-sequencing methods and the tools for sampling and analysis, new field monitoring techniques of bio-aerosols and microbiology in the built environment, and link to building science. The new developments have brought new promises to indoor air sciences, and will lead us into a whole new world of built environment microbiology.

And there will be one Sloan Keynote Session – This is one of the five Indoor Air 2014 keynote sessions. The keynote speakers are Professor William W Nazaroff of UC Berkeley, Professor Julian Tang of the University of Alberta and Professor Edward Nardell of Harvard University.

The conference’s closing plenary lecture will be a Sloan Foundation Plenary by Professor Richard Corsi of the University of Texas at Austin on the future research needs and directions of indoor air sciences.

Indoor Air 2014 is the official flagship conference of the International Society for Indoor Air Quality and Climate (ISIAQ). The Call for Abstracts and the Call for Papers is open now and submissions are invited on a wide range of subjects including but not limited to the Microbiology of the Built Environment.

More information about the conference can be found at IndoorAir2014.org.