MAE Graduate Seminar: Why Indoor Chemistry Matters

Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Graduate Seminar

Chemistry occurs in our buildings as well as in our outdoor world. Indoors, certain processes (e.g., surface chemistry) play a larger role while other processes (e.g., photochemistry) become less important. Over the past decade, a number of established atmospheric chemists have brought their tools and knowledge indoors, complementing the efforts of those already focused on indoor environments. Such combined efforts have led to a “growth spurt” in indoor chemistry. Studies from labs across the globe are significantly advancing our understanding of the sources of indoor chemicals, their partitioning among indoor compartments (air, airborne particles, surfaces), and their chemical transformations. The pandemic has brought added attention to indoor environments and the microbes and chemicals to which we are exposed therein. This talk will begin with an overview of indoor chemistry and then summarize recent, and at times surprising, findings.

Speaker: Charlie Weschler, Ph.D.

After completing his Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Chicago, Dr. Weschler did postdoctoral studies with Prof. Fred Basolo at Northwestern University. In 1975 he joined Bell Laboratories as a research scientist in the Physical Chemistry Division. He conducted research at Bell Labs and its successor institutions until 2001, being named a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff (1986). In 2001 he transitioned from Bellcore/Telcordia to faculty positions at the Environmental & Occupational Health Science Institute, Rutgers University, and the International Centre for Indoor Environment and Energy, Technical University of Denmark. He has continued in those positions through the present. In 2010 he joined the faculty of the Building Science department at Tsinghua University (Beijing) as an ongoing Visiting Professor. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Rutgers School of Public Health. He has been a member of four committees for the National Academy of Sciences, and from 1999-2005 he served on the US EPA’s Science Advisory Board. More recently (2012-2023) he was an advisor for the Sloan Foundation’s Chemistry of Indoor Environments program. He was elected to the International Academy of Indoor Air Sciences in 1999 and received the Pettenkofer Award, its highest honor, in 2014. He has been conferred the 2017 Haagen-Smit Prize from Atmospheric Environment; “Distinguished Visiting Professor” at Tsinghua University (2018); received an honorary doctorate (“Doctor Technices Honoris Causa”) from the Technical University of Denmark (2018); and was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2020, AAAS). He has an h-index of 78 with over 19,500 citations (Web of Science) and 88 with over 27,000 citations (Google Scholar).