Microbiomes are the (mostly) unseen communities of bacteria, fungi, viruses, and other microorganisms that inhabit a specific environment.

Almost everywhere on Earth hosts a microbiome. Soils, oceans, air, buildings, and even your own body have different and complex microbiomes, and each can be unique!

The built environment refers to any space built by humans, generally what we refer to as “indoors.”

These spaces include your home, place of work, vehicle, hospital, and shopping mall. The average person can spend up to 90% of their life within built environments.

We are all too aware that some microbes can make us sick, and many of those can be picked up through contact with our immediate environment.

One mission of PreMiEr is to learn how to prevent harmful or pathogenic microbes from surviving in the built environment and help make our time spent indoors safer.

Recent advances in both materials and design have helped to improve the health of buildings and the people in them.

In PreMiEr, we are also attempting to learn if the presence of specific microbes can also lead to healthier indoor spaces.

Our researchers and partners may one day design buildings to promote the growth of those helpful microorganisms, all while educating a new and diverse generation of engineers.