Achievement

IGERT Trainees Shahana Khurshid and Jorge Urquidi and IGERT Affiliates Marwa Zaatari, Elena Nirlo, Mark Jackson, and Andrew Hoisington are all integral members in a large field effort investigating indoor air quality (IAQ) and ventilation in retail environments. This project is one of very few attempts to characterize a building type that is enormously important from building energy use and occupational exposure perspectives. The project design and execution is interdisciplinary involving architectural engineering (building and HVAC characterization), environmental engineering (measurements of numerous indoor and outdoor contaminants), communications (survey of employee perceptions), and microbiology (DNA- and culture-based assessments of the bacterial and fungal communities). The broader impacts of the project will include proposed revised ventilation guidelines for retail buildings and novel approaches to controlling ventilation that optimize both IAQ and energy.