News

Aerosol Surveillance: Detection & Prevention of COVID-19

COVID seems like it is here to stay, and as we move into an endemic era, we need reliable and cost-effective solutions to support safe indoor congregation. If air contamination levels can be examined in buildings, we may be able to better control and identify COVID-19...

COVID-19 and the Built Environment

As corporate entities, city, county, state and federal governments around the world take action against the spread of COVID-19, the built environment has been thrust onto center stage with a prominent role. Therefore, the unique expertise of researchers at the...

02/15/2020 Remembering GZ Brown

With the recent passing of one of our dearest members, founders and influencers; we are remembering GZ “Charlie” Brown with high regards knowing how much he impacted architecture and everyone around him throughout his life. Specifically, his time here at the...

Latest Publication from BioBE!

This past January 2020, the publication How Light Exposure Changes Bacterial Communities in Household Dust was published under new discovery at Frontiers for Young Minds. The full article can be read here on their website. Rosenberg, S., Ishaq, S., May, J., and...

Review on health in the built environment

Hot off the press, a new review on health in the built environment is available today!  The article is found here, but an open-access, view-only version is available here.  It's part of the Healthy Building special issue from the Journal of Exposure Science &...

The Cost of Cool

The New York Times article “The Cost of Cool” explains the downside of air-conditioners: “Air-conditioners draw copious electricity, and deliver a double whammy in terms of climate change, since both the electricity they use and the coolants they contain result in...

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Report from “The Great Indoors”

  BioBE scientists recently participated in a special session held at the 97th Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Portland, Oregon. The session (titled “The Great Indoors: Recent Advances in the Ecology of Built Environments”) was co-organized...

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Healthy Buildings 2012

Graduate Research Fellow, Gwynne Mhuireach, discussed current BioBE Center research on potential links between sustainable building design and indoor microbial communities at Healthy Buildings 2012 in Brisbane Australia, July 8 - 12. Ventilation rates and methods are...

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Discover Mag talks with BioBE

“Earth’s Last Unexplored Wilderness: Your Very Own Home” in the July-August 2012 issue of Discover Magazine features the BioBE Center and other prominent labs leading the investigation of the indoor microbiome. Members of BioBE talk about center projects including The...

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The Nature of Cities

The recently launched Nature of Cities collective blog looks fantastic.  From the contributors:  The Nature of Cities is a collective of contributors, an essay site devoted to cities as ecological spaces.  Cities are fundamentally ecological spaces. They are...

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Indoor Ecology featured at TEDxPortland

TEDxPortland invited the BioBE Center to speak about indoor ecology and our most recent research at the Lillis Business Complex.  This event was extraordinary.  Featured speakers included architect Gene Sandoval who designed the award winning  John E. Jacqua Academic...

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BioBE Center at TEDMED 2012

BioBE Center members Jessica Green and Keith Herkert were granted Front-Line Scholarships to attend the TEDMED conference from April 10-13. We made many new connections with some amazing and inspiring individuals. More innovative ideas are on the horizon for BioBE...

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BioBE Center at TED 2012

The BioBE Center is working with the Autodesk Dasher Project to visualize microbiological data in the built environment.  Go here for a brief demo of Jessica Green interfacing with Project Dasher at TED2012.

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BioBE Center Featured in Science

In the February 10 issue of Science, reporter Courtney Humphries profiles the growing community of scientists investigating the built environment microbiome.  The article features Sloan Foundation Program Officer Paula Olsiewski, BioBE Director Jessica Green, and...

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Caitlin Smith Takes Top Honors

As mentioned a few weeks ago, high school sophomore Caitlin Smith presented her study of domestic microbes at the Dallastown science fair on January 28.  Caitlin's work earned her a First Place ranking and advanced her to the county science fair next month....

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BioBE Center: now in Print

The BioBE Center's inaugural article was published today in The ISME Journal (available online via Open Access). In it, Kembel et al. report the influence of architectural design on airborne microbial communities in a Portland-area hospital. As compared to outdoor...

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Biology and the built environment center

(541) 346-5647 103 Pacific Hall 5219 University of Oregon Eugene,  OR 97403-5231