Archive for February, 2013

Group member wins internal IIT research fellowship!

The good news was finally announced on IIT’s website but we’ve known for a couple of months: research group member Tiffanie Ramos (MS ENVE expected Fall ’13) earned the prestigious Starr-Fieldhouse fellowship at IIT! The fellowship supports students who are working on research jointly between IIT and one of a few surrounding research institutions, including Argonne National Lab, Fermi Lab, or IIT’s private Research Institute. Tiffanie was awarded the fellowship for her proposal to support the ongoing Hospital Microbiome Project, which we are working on with PI Jack Gilbert at the University of Chicago and Argonne Lab (read more here). She will be assisting in building science measurements to support air sampling and better characterize environmental conditions, HVAC operation, and human occupancy in patient rooms of a new hospital (meanwhile, the ANL team is sampling ~13,000 surfaces over the course of a year to explore how microbial communities change over time once a new hospital is occupied). Congrats to Tiffanie!

Now if you’ll excuse us, we have to go setup equipment at the hospital!