One of our broad goals at BIMERC, the UC Berkeley group funded by Sloan, is to look at what microbes are found indoors and why. We first tackled this in homes and decided to survey in a university family housing complex – in essence, getting replication in the built environment while eliminating potential sources of …
Next in our “People Behind the Science” video series we have an interview with Greg Caporaso from Northern Arizona University. Here he’s talking about his new Sloan-funded project on “Office Surface Microbiomes Across Climates”. Transcript:
If you want to watch an entertaining video introduction to why the microbiology of the built environment is really important to you (and all of us), you must watch this video — Meet your microbes. The other day, I asked Jonathan Eisen why his Ted Talk was not linked on the microbe.net web site and …
Postdoctoral Scholar opportunities: Indoor Bioaerosol Dynamics We are recruiting a postdoctoral scholar for a project, funded by the Alfred P. Sloan foundation, that aims to better understand bioaerosol dynamics in neonatal healthcare settings. The broad goal of the research is to better understand the role of the indoor environment in neonatal intensive care units (NICU) …
[edited from the ASHRAE press release] Changes to clarify requirements in a proposed standard are open for public comment. The proposed ASHRAE standard, 188P, Prevention of Legionellosis Associated with Building Water Systems, specifies what must be done to control the spread of legionellosis. The standard helps facility managers/owners understand how to apply the available information …
Call for participants for a meeting on Evolutionary Biology of the Built Environment. Details copied from the announcement and posted below: The Basics: We need your help. We are organizing the first working group aimed at understanding the evolutionary biology of the built environment–our bedrooms, our houses, our backyards and our cities. This working group will occur June …
We recently wrote about moldy documents in French archives and a higher incidence of asthma among workers who handled documents than others working in the same spaces but not handling them. See our previous post: “Hands off the moldy docs (for your own good?)” Now we find researchers reported that bacteria can also be transferred …
Next in our “People Behind the Science” video series is Amy Pruden from Virginia Tech. Dr. Pruden has recently received a Sloan grant to work on the “Effect of Pipe Materials, Water Flow, and Chemistry on the Building Plumbing Microbiome”. In this video she talks about this project and her arrival in the field of …
The last of the new Sloan grants is a project called “Transmission and alteration of the human microbiome by urban public transportation systems” which is being managed by Curtis Huttenhower at the Harvard Public School of Health, along with his Co-PI, Jack Spengler. Detailed description below:
Next in our “People Behind the Science” series is an interview with James Scott from the University of Toronto. Dr. Scott has recently received a Sloan grant to work on “Improved Testing Methods for Common Building Materials”. In this interview he talks about this project and his interest in the field. Transcript of video: