HOMEChem Open House - House Observations of Microbial and Environmental Chemistry

This week on IAQradio+ will be broadcasting live from the Open House event for the HOMEChem study at the University of Texas Austin's, J.J. Pickle Research Campus. The HOMEChem experiment (House Observations of Microbial and Environmental Chemistry) incorporates state-of-the-art measurements performed by over 20 investigators and their teams from the fields of chemistry, microbiology, and engineering. This experiment engages far more institutions and disciplines than ever applied to the study of a home. This research study is sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Chemistry of Indoor Environments Program and it will take place this summer at the University of Texas at Austin's UTest House. 

 

Our guests for this special show are Marina Vance (HOMEChem Co-PIs / organizer) Delphine Farmer (HOMEChem Co-PIs / organizer) Atila Novoselac (HOMEChem host, specialist on the UTest house) Rich Corsi (HOMEChem host, indoor air specialist)

 

Richard L. Corsi, PhD

Dr. Richard L. Corsi is the Joe J. King Chair in Engineering #2 in the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering (CAEE) at The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin). He has served on the faculty of CAEE at UT Austin for nearly 25 years, after starting his career in the School of Engineering at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. Dr. Corsi is highly regarded as an educator. He has received numerous teaching awards, and in 2015 was inducted into the Academy of Distinguished Teachers, an honor held for the top 5% of teachers across UT Austin. He also received a Regents' Outstanding Teaching Award for the entire UT system in 2016.

 

Dr. Corsi's research focuses on sources, physics and chemistry of indoor air pollution, particularly as related to pollutant interactions with indoor materials and innovative strategies for using such interactions to reduce human exposure to air pollution of both outdoor and indoor origin. He has served as principal investigator on over 70 projects, as major advisor to over 50 undergraduate and 70 graduate students, and as co-author on over 300 journal/conference papers, reports, and book chapters. His work has been featured in National Geographic, The Economist, Business Week, National Wildlife, Prevention, Men's Health, National Public Radio's Science Friday, Science Studio, the Academic Minute, the Canadian television series The Nature of Things, and more.

 

Delphine Farmer, PhD

Dr. Delphine Farmer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Colorado State University. Her research focuses on building new instrumentation to measure reactive trace gases and particles in the atmosphere in order to understand how humans are changing our environment. She is particularly interested in the emissions from forests, and has recently taken the dive into the complex world of indoor chemistry.

 

Dr. Farmer grew up in Canada, and received her BSc in Chemistry from McGill University in Montreal. She moved to warmer climates to earn her Master's in Environmental Science, Policy and Management and her PhD in Chemistry, both from the University of California at Berkeley. Her research focused on using laser spectroscopy to study forest-atmosphere interactions. Delphine then held a NOAA Climate and Global Change Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Colorado Boulder, working with aerosol mass spectrometers in forests in the Brazilian Amazon and California's Sierra Nevada mountains.

 

Atila Novoselac, PhD

Dr. Atila Novoselac is a Professor in the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. He holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Belgrade University and in 2005 received his PhD in Architectural Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University. The ultimate goal of his research is to improve buildings with respect to their impact on occupants' health and overall energy performance. He conducts both fundamental and applied research that leads to healthy and efficient buildings. Specifically, his work focuses on: (1) investigating transport phenomena in buildings that influence human exposure to airborne pollutants and pathogens, and (2) developing methods to improve the thermal characteristics and energy performance of building systems. His research is merging the energy, indoor environment, and human exposure aspects of buildings for developing integrated design/operation solutions. He teaches courses on the subjects of building mechanical systems, building physics, and advanced measuring and modeling techniques for performance analysis of building environmental control systems. He is an active member of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning (ASHRAE) and, as a chair or voting member on several of ASHRAE's technical committees, he is contributing to developing/advancing building codes and standards. Beside fellowships and awards, his research and advising work has been well recognized in academia as many of his PhD students have received prestigious positions at universities with top programs in building energy and environment related fields.

 

Marina Vance, PhD

Dr. Marina Vance is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering with a courtesy appointment in the Environmental Engineering Program at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research is focused on applying engineering tools to better understand and minimize human exposure to novel environmental contaminants from everyday activities and the use of consumer products. Her group focuses on the physical and chemical characterization of ultrafine aerosols, or nanoparticles in air.

 

Before joining CU Boulder, she was the Associate Director of the Virginia Tech Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology (VTSuN) and Deputy Director of the VT National Center for Earth and Environmental Nanotechnology Infrastructure (NanoEarth).

 

Dr. Vance received her PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Virginia Tech in 2012 for studying the release of nanomaterials, especially silver nanoparticles, from the use of everyday consumer products. She received her Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Environmental Engineering by the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (Florianópolis, Brazil).