Job posting regarding multiple post-doc positions in a multi-discliplnary project managed by the University of California Berkeley (UCB), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), and the National University of Singapore (NUS): Up to four postdoctoral scholar appointments are available for a joint new research program between the University of California Berkeley (UCB), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), and …
Another just-approved project in the built environment. This project led by Noah Fierer (CU Boulder), Shelly Miller (CU Boulder) and Rob Dunn (North Carolina State) will look at the factors structuring bacterial and fungal diversity in 1,000 homes across the United States. We propose the first continental-scale study testing how and why house-associated microbial communities …
The Sloan Foundation today announced funding for a pilot study looking at the effects of weatherization on the indoor airborne microbiome. This work will be performed by Largus Angenent at Cornell University. The full summary of the project is below: The U.S. Department of Energy has instituted a weatherization program aimed at making homes more …
Interesting video from ASM Live about a project sampling for microbes in hotel rooms. Featuring Katie Kirsch from the University of Houston and Jonathan Eisen from UC Davis.
The Sloan Foundation review process for proposals dealing with the microbiology of the built environment deadline has been extended from June 15th until the first week of July. Full text below: Dear Colleague − Due to the large number of submissions in response to the March 27, 2012 call for letters of intent, the …
Short post here about an upcoming study by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University (in collaboration with Delta Airlines). They are going to examine microbes in the air on commercial aviation flights, as well as sample a number of surfaces on the plane. They’re going to correlate this microbial diversity data …
Well we’ve just wrapped of the first (of three) annual conferences on the Microbiology of the Built Environment here in Boulder. I thought the meeting went really well, a big thanks again to the organizers Mark Hernandez and Alina Handorean. There were a lot of tweets during the meeting which we’ll collect using Storify and …
Here’s a really interesting sounding upcoming symposium on the indoor microbiome, chaired by Jordan Peccia and Tiina Reponen. This will take place on October 9th, 2012 at the American Association for Aerosol Research (AAAR) meeting in Minneapolis. The description is below: Continually evolving molecular biology and computational methods are catalyzing the further integration of the …
Just a quick post here about an interesting microbial detective story in the built environment of a whiskey distillery. The researcher profiled in this story was trying to identify a fungus that thrives on the ethanol released from the distillery process. This article from Wired magazine also talks about the concept of “urban extremophiles”, pointing …
Just a short post here about “art meets science”. A project at UC San Diego has created “flashing bacterial signs” (also called “biopixels”) that synchronously flash on and off through controlled fluorescence. Which is pretty cool by itself, and reminds me a bit of the stunt with the Contagion promo. See the original paper here. …