2022 Microbiology of the Built Environment GRC & GRS

In today’s modern world, people spend about 90% of their time in the built environment including residential homes/buildings, offices/schools, and commercial, entertainment, and recreational facilities. Microorganisms in the built environment can have adverse impact on human health ranging from triggering allergies to the transmission of viral diseases such as COVID-19.

The interdisciplinary scientific field that studies these microorganisms is called the “Microbiology of the Built Environment” (MoBE). This conference award will support speakers, students, and early career researchers to attend the 2022 Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on MoBE to discuss the state of the field and learn from recent research findings.

The GRC will provide opportunities for the participants to exchange ideas and build new partnerships to advance the important and emerging of field MoBE.

The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the need to improve the fundamental understanding of pathogen and disease transmission in the built-environment. An interdisciplinary field, Microbiology of the Built Environment (MoBE), has emerged focused around the science, engineering, and public health implications of the fate, transport, and infectivity of microbial and viral pathogens in the built environment.

MoBE converges and integrates concepts, principles, and expertise from many fields including microbiology, virology, engineering, medicine, and public health. This NSF award will support the June 2022 Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on MoBE that will be held in Waterville Valley (NH). The theme of this conference is “Microbes at the Interface of Water, Air, and Human Health in Built Environments”.

This GRC comes at a critical time as the MoBE field initiates more in-depth discussions to identify critical research questions, “Grand Challenges”, and unmet research needs. The NSF award will provide travel grants to speakers, students, and early career researchers to enable them to attend the MoB GRC. As a key deliverable for this award, the conference organizers will leverage the workshop discussions to lead the crafting of a vision/perspective article tentatively entitled “Microbiology of the Built Environment – the Next 10-Years”.

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.