SBIR-STTR Award

The broader reaching impacts/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research project stems from the development and application of a new generation of cost-effective devices that can efficiently recover, preserve and quantify airborne microbes in near real time. An improved ability to characterize the microbiology of indoor aerosols has a multitude of important engineering and public health benefits for urban society. This includes a vastly improved ability to monitor bioaerosols in health care settings; in water-damaged buildings; in plane/rail/bus transportation centers; as well as other high-density public venues. Through this work, emerging aerosol technology will be optimized and deployed in portable instrumentation that reports what currently marketed aerosol monitoring equipment cannot provide: the identity, distribution and abundance of airborne microorganisms indoors. This approach provides an unprecedented path to compile large exposure databases, which enable the scientific and medical community to better understand the potential effects of indoor microbial air pollution. Compared to conventional aerosol sampling, these new filter-less devices require little human oversite, communicate aerosol data to cloud-based servers, and preserve bioaerosol samples with exceptional fidelity. These next generation instruments provide an innovative, unobtrusive and practical method for surveying the indoor air we breathe every day, in near real-time.This STTR Phase I project integrates portable lasers for real-time microbe enumeration, with humidity controls that efficiently recover bacteria, fungi and pollen from indoor air. This advanced equipment assembly accurately counts, preserves and concentrates airborne microbes for stringent biochemical analysis that is relevant to public health. The opportunity for this new instrumentation leverages the fundamental technological advantages it has over conventional sampling equipment, which until now predominantly relies on filtering large quantities of indoor air. The mechanical stresses microbes must endure during conventional air filtration, seriously compromises the accuracy of airborne microbial analyses. The research objective of this work is to challenge this novel instrumentation array with known quantities of airborne microbes that commonly inhabit the indoor environment. Using widely accepted engineering and biochemistry methods, the overarching goal is to systematically validate the efficiency of this new equipment, both in the laboratory and in the field. We anticipate markedly better quantitative recovery of airborne microbial activity and genetic material (DNA) where directly compared to its filter-based counterparts. Thus, the commercial and societal value of this new instrumentation is realized through displacing outmoded aerosol collection methods with highly efficient filter-less air sampling devices, outfitted with modern optics and digital automation.

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project is to provide general commercial access to a new generation of affordable, high-efficiency aerosol samplers that will primarily be used in the Industrial Hygiene and Indoor Air Quality market. The collection technology in these new instruments is unique in that it captures, concentrates and preserves airborne microbes in the same physical state they exist as they are suspended in the air we breathe- a tremendous breakthrough for forensic aerosol analysis. This work optimizes a novel collection method that chronologically resolves air samples into a portable compact platform, which ensures purity, minimizes handling and is safe for mail. The sample output is delivered in small, sterile medical grade disposable plastics that are compatible with a broad range of users' analytical needs whether it be the military, health care, atmospheric researchers or indoor air quality sector. This instrumentation is portable, and requires no filters or chemical additions; it rapidly condenses airborne microbes out of ambient air by manipulating humidity, offering a reliable way to assess microbiological air pollution-indoors or out. This SBIR Phase II project proposes to optimize the design of condensation growth-based bioaerosol samplers for commercial validation, rapid manufacture and high-quality reproduction. The accurate assessment of airborne biological agents remains a tremendous scientific and practical challenge. The intellectual merit of this work lies in finally overcoming the technical barriers posed by conventional air sampling equipment, which require extensive sampling time and significantly compromises the very information military, medical and building science professionals need: what is the identity, distribution and abundance of airborne microbes. This team will use the latest forensic genetic sequencing technology to isolate the detection limits of this new collection equipment for common airborne pathogens and allergens. The objective is to validate these new filterless aerosol recovery instruments in controlled laboratory experiments, with a broad range of common pathogenic bioaerosols. The team will demonstrate how the sample preservation benefits of this technology, can be realized for commercial benefit in monitoring high-density indoor environments, including health care settings and public schools. Operating this new equipment in occupied indoor spaces, we anticipate collecting bioaerosol in excess of forensic detection limits in less than 30 minutes, while maintaining exceptional sample fidelity.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.