2018 Microbiology of the Built Environment GRC

美国人90%以上的时间都在建筑物中度过，那里是大多数有害和有益微生物暴露的地方，需要更好的信息来了解这如何影响人类健康。该提案请求提供支持，以帮助支付14名初级科学家和工程师参加首届戈登建造环境微生物学研究会议的费用。戈登研究会议在缅因州比德福德的新英格兰大学举行。申请的资金将提供多样化的研究水平、专业知识和经验，以实现特定目标，以培养和发展新兴的科学、工程和医学界，这些社区已经聚集在一起，研究建筑物中的微生物和人类健康。这一建议有利于促进交流保护人类福祉的科学进展，从而使社会受益。建筑微生物学领域试图了解建筑设计、居住和运营如何影响人类接触微生物，并最终这些微生物暴露如何影响健康。环境工程师、建筑师、微生物生态学家、免疫学家、医生和流行病学家充斥着这一新兴领域。需要一个单一的会议场所来交流研究成果，建立不同领域的研究人员之间的合作，并培养这个跨学科的研究人员社区。为此，该提案的总体目标是将微生物学、建筑工程和健康领域的研究人员聚集在一起，以扩大、培育和发展新兴的科学、工程和医学界，以研究建筑物中的微生物和人类健康。本次大会的主要创新之处在于将建筑环境研究与微生物评价和人类健康相结合。近年来，由高通量DNA测序实现的微生物生态学主导了该领域的大部分领域。在所有被邀请的演讲中，至少50%将讨论建筑环境中健康的某些方面，其余的将讨论生态和建筑工程方面的新主题。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Americans spend more than 90% of their time in buildings, where the majority of hazardous and beneficial microbial exposures occur, and better information of how this impacts human health is needed. This proposal requests support to help defray costs of 14 junior scientists and engineers to participate in the inaugural Gordon Research Conference on the Microbiology of the Built Environment at the University of New England in Biddeford, ME. The requested funds will provide a diverse mix of research levels, expertise, and experience to achieve specific objectives to foster and grow the emerging scientific, engineering and medical community that has assembled to study microbes and human health in buildings. This proposal benefits society by facilitating communication of scientific progress towards the protection of human wellbeing. The field of building microbiology seeks to understand how building design, occupancy, and operation impact human exposure to microbes and ultimately how these microbial exposures impact wellbeing. Environmental engineers, architects, microbial ecologists, immunologists, physicians, and epidemiologists populate this emerging field. A single conference venue is needed to exchange research results, build collaborations from researchers in disparate fields, and to foster this interdisciplinary community of researchers. Towards this, the proposal has the overall objective of bringing together researchers on the frontiers of microbiology, building engineering, and health to extend, foster, and grow the emerging scientific, engineering and medical communities to study microbes and human health in buildings. The major innovation of this conference is the focus on integrating the built environment research with microbial assessment and human health. In recent years, microbial ecology, enabled by high throughput DNA sequencing has dominated much of the field. At least 50% of all invited talks will address some aspect of health in the built environment, with the remainder addressing noveltopics on ecology and building engineering.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.