Podcast: Director Wymelenberg Goes On-Air with EC&M
Our Director, Kevin Van Den Wymelenberg sat down with EC&M's (Electrical Construction & Maintenance) Editor In-Chief, Ellen Parson to talk about the future of LLLC lighting controls. Check out the podcast episode here. (Note: To listen to the episode, you will...
Welcome to Poppy: New Consortium Member
A warm welcome to Poppy, the newest member of our Build Health Consortium! Over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, the world realized the role of indoor space in affecting lives and livelihoods. During this time, the scientific community learned a lot about...
The Future of Design: Taskshade at Wanted Design NYC
Mira Zimmerman of ESBL virtually interviewed Taskshade Co-Founder, Designer, and former ESBL student Peter Van Liefde to find out what’s going on with the innovative personal sunshade project. Fresh with ideas from the Wanted Design conference in New York, an...
In the News: Innovation for Managing Future Epidemics
Our work on air quality and viral spread has been featured in the University of Oregon publication Around the O. Improving air quality, health screenings, and public health messaging—research performed at the UO points to better strategies for managing future...
Members & Collaborators: Register for the 2022 Build Health Symposium
Check out our 2022 Build Health Symposium lineup! We will be having some incredible talks at our Symposium on June 16th & 17th. If you haven't yet registered, please register here.
In the Media: Oregon’s Leadership Supports Mass Timber Coalition Work
Oregon's Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley recently visited the Tall Wood Design Institute to learn more about our Mass Timber Coalition, and how we plan to create resilient buildings in the Pacific Northwest. We are collaborating with the Tall Wood Design Institute to...
In Conversation: Talk on the Pandemic Built Environment
See our researchers talk with Jack Gilbert, mSystems Editor-In-Chief, on the pandemic built environment. Read the publication that inspired this conversation here: 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic: Built Environment Considerations To Reduce Transmission
Social Distancing Only Goes So Far: New Paper on COVID-19 Near & Far Field Exposure & Time
Our latest preprint on COVID-19 and aerosol transmission: "A novel VOC breath tracer method to evaluate indoor respiratory exposures in the near- and far-fields" is available! The public has been told for the majority of the pandemic that we need to keep our distance...
Mass Timber Coalition Launches
The Oregon Mass Timber Coalition has launched their website at masstimbercoalition.org. As of today, the Oregon Mass Timber Coalition is submitting the proposal for the Build Back Better Program! If funded, we will be developing an innovation hub and production campus...
Resilient Housing: Partnering with Net Zero Fellow Jessy Ledesma
We are excited to announce our partnership with Net Zero Fellow Jessy Ledesma of HomeWork development. In our continued efforts towards Mass Plywood Panel Housing, Jessy, IHBE, and ESBL are teaming up to develop "new combinations of systems and technologies for...
Our mission is to develop new design concepts for the realization of healthy and sustainable inhabited space. We do this by forming unconventional transdisciplinary collaborations that conduct research where architecture, biology, medicine, chemistry, and engineering intersect and translate it into design practice through a consortium of invested industry partners. Our understanding of what a “healthy building” constitutes – from its complex microbiome, its chemistry, its provision of light and air, and its energy and carbon footprint – is fragmented, underdeveloped, and too often not reflected in practice. The Institute for Health in the Built Environment pursues an integrated approach to conducting and applying research so that every built environment provides health at multiple scales, from individual to planetary. IHBE is dedicated to focusing on equity for individuals and communities who face health disparities due to the creation and operation of built environments.
IHBE has collaborated with:
Researchers
Disciplines
Institutions
Students
The Gardener Microbiome: New Paper
What types of bacteria, fungi, and viruses inhabit garden soil? Does gardening without gloves affect your own skin microbiome? In 2019, BioBE’s Dr. Gwynne Mhuireach received a prestigious Postdoctoral Fellowship from the USDA National Institute of Food and...
New Paper: Temporary Establishment of Bacteria from Indoor Plant Leaves and Soil on Human Skin
That plant you have on your desk? You are in relationship with it- well, microbially at least. Dr. Gwynne Mhuireach at BioBE is working to understand relationships between plant microbes and people. Humans have always been close to the microbial communities in plants...
The Impact of School Facilities on Student Learning & Engagement
A team of researchers at the University of Oregon’s NetZED Laboratory are taking a deep dive into how school buildings affect the learning outcomes of students. NetZED’s work reviews the literature on school facilities and details the relationships between students...
New Publication: Novel VOC Breath Tracer Method for Studying Aerosol Transmission
It’s important to stay six feet apart, but eventually it stops mitigating disease transmission risk. Several studies suggest that transmission from a distance greater than six feet explains a significant number of COVID-19 superspreading outbreaks. Because of this,...