By Brent Stephens on February 15, 2013
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!
By Brent Stephens on November 15, 2012
Yesterday Google announced on their official blog that they were awarding a $3 million grant to the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) in support of healthy buildings and indoor environmental health. Google’s interest in healthy indoor environments stems from their own internal commitment to using low-emitting products in their own workspaces. Now they will be helping to change the way we all think about building materials. Google imagines a nutrition-like-label about every product we use indoors, with a list of building “ingredients” for each product (with a particular focus on potentially harmful or toxic chemicals). Their grant will support industry research and the development of better standards around healthy materials.
This is exciting news for our field. I appreciate that they are funding both research and standards development, as they should go hand-in-hand, the latter informed by the former. Standards are a bit of a mess as they stand now.
One issue I see is Google’s vision of an “ingredients” label for building products. It’s a smart idea, but I hope it’s done right (or I hope we can get some of this funding to ensure it’s done right). Currently products are identified in LEED as merely containing low levels of total volatile organic compounds (TVOCs) in their mix (think: paint must have a low TVOC content). But that misses two points: (1) how well does mere TVOC content in bulk correlate to actual emissions after application? (there is some evidence that this correlation may not be very strong) and (2) are there individual VOCs that are more important for health concerns than the sum of TVOCs? There are also some issues with how VOCs are actually defined, but we’ll save that for another day. On (1), I do believe that the new 2012 proposed LEED guidelines push for actual emissions testing, but the way they specify the testing is extremely important.
Overall, I’m excited to see some movement in this direction. I’ve linked to a few other bits of media coverage if you’re interested:
By Brent Stephens on October 21, 2012
I’ve had a few pieces of good news in terms of funding over the last month or so. Three new projects has been funded from a variety of organizations:
- “Impact of duct design on life cycle costs of residential HVAC systems” was funded by the Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute (AHRI). In this project, we will work with residential HVAC design and installation firms in both Austin, TX and Chicago, IL to first design and price low, medium, and high pressure duct distribution systems for a typical residential building and then model the likely impacts of those systems on energy use and life cycle costs of operating the system in a couple of climates. Continue Reading →
