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The quality of indoor air can be influenced by numerous factors, such as cooking, cleaning agents, pets, fireplaces, fungi, and mildew, which have a significant effect on human health.

Jenna Ditto, an assistant professor of energy, environmental, and chemical engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, intends to establish a connection between indoor air quality and the chemistry of building material surfaces with a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation totaling nearly $280,000.

Ditto and her research team aim to determine if the surface composition impacts the proliferation of indoor microbes and how exposure to indoor air contaminants affects the metabolism of these microbes. Her group will partner with Bridget Hegarty, from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Case Western Reserve University, who specializes in the microbiology of indoor settings. Together, they will correlate the chemical composition of building material surfaces with microbial gene expression and the chemical emissions from microbes to the indoor air.

Learn more on the McKelvey Engineering website.

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