The Indoor Air Institute

 

The Indoor Air Institute was formed in 2005 as an independent and unbiased organization to provide high quality, impartial, and relevant contributions to salient scientific and public policy questions concerning the indoor environment.  All results from efforts undertaken by the Indoor Air Institute are made available not only to the sponsors, but also to other key decision-makers, the scientific community, and the public.

 

The Indoor Air Institute receives funds to organize and conduct meetings and workshops on all major aspects of the indoor environment.  The Institute periodically engages in special reviews and evaluations of key scientific and technological issues that are relevant to public policy concerning indoor environments. Typically, Indoor Air Institute seeks funding from government and foundations. Some project funding may come from commercial interests.  In all cases, the Institute's projects are conducted in the public interest, independent of the funding sources.

 

An independent Board of Directors governs Indoor Air Institute. The Institute's Directors initiate and oversee IndAir activities. The Indoor Air Institute draws on distinguished scientists who bring wide-ranging and relevant expertise to its activities. The results of each project are communicated through Indoor Air Institute's home page and through publications in open literature.  Results may also be presented directly to professional societies, legislative bodies, and public agencies.

 

 

Board of Directors

 

Hal Levin - President

Hal Levin is a research architect and president of Building Ecology Research Group. His focus has been research and consulting on the impacts of buildings on their occupants and the environment. He coined the term “Building Ecology” in 1979 to describe the study of the dynamic, interdependent relationships between buildings, their occupants, and the larger environment. Levin was educated at Cornell University and University of California Berkeley where he earned a B. Arts degree in English (1964) and the professional degree, B. Architecture (1969). He served as a volunteer architect in the Peace Corps in Colombia (1966 to 1968). He was Research Specialist at the Center for Environmental Design Research at UC Berkeley (1978-1989) and a Lecturer in the Department of Architecture (1978-1983). He was also Lecturer in the Board of Studies of Environmental Studies at UC Santa Cruz (1978-1983). He was Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (2000-2005).

 

He served as a member (1977-1985) and President (1983-1985) of the California State Board of Architectural Examiners. He was named a Fellow of ASHRAE and also of ASTM where he has served on and chaired many committees since the mid-1980s. He was Editor of the Indoor Air Quality Update and later the Indoor Air Bulletin, and has published nearly 100 articles and papers and several book chapters. He was a founding member of the International Academy of Indoor Air Sciences and served as the President of its 2002 conference held in Monterey, California.  He is Associate Editor of the journal Indoor Air and on the Editorial Advisory Board of Building Research and Information.

 

 

Seema Bhangar – Vice President

Seema Bhangar is a Sr. Scientist at Aclima, Inc., a company that designs, develops, and deploys environmental sensing solutions to improve the way we operate buildings, cities, and relevant sectors in industry. She is the author of 10+ refereed archival journal articles as well as numerous conference papers, invited talks, and reports that address indoor environmental quality, human exposure, low-cost sensing, and climate change.  She has graduate degrees (M.S. in Environmental Health Sciences, Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering) from the University of California, Berkeley, where she also completed postdoctoral research on the microbiome of the built environment. At Aclima, Seema manages technical coordination and integration across teams, and applies her scientific expertise to product development. In 2017, she served as a subject matter expert on the US Green Building Council Working Group on Indoor Air Quality. She regularly serves as a peer-reviewer for journals and conferences including ES&T, Building and Environment, Indoor Air and Greenbuild.

 

 

Brett Singer – Vice President

Brett C. Singer is a Staff Scientist, Leader of the Indoor Environment Group, and Principal Investigator in the Building Systems Department at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.  Brett has conducted and directed research to improve understanding of air pollutant emissions, controls, and the real-world physical-chemical processes that impact exposures in both outdoor and indoor environments. His post-doctoral work on sorption and desorption processes impacting exposures to organic gases from tobacco brought increased attention to the importance of surface materials on indoor air quality and helped start the field of thirdhand tobacco smoke research. Brett has also made impactful contributions to understanding pollutant exposures from cleaning products and combustion appliances. In recent years Brett’s research focused attention on cooking and burners as major sources of pollutants in residences and the shortcomings of current practices and standards for kitchen ventilation. Brett has published more than 50 papers in top peer-reviewed scientific journals and dozens of other reports and conference papers. He earned a BA in Engineering (Summa Cum Laude) from Temple University and MS and PhD degrees in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.

 

 

 

 

 

Contact info:

 

Indoor Air Institute

Santa Cruz, California, 95060

 

e-mail: info@IndAir.org