image: Madhav Marathe is a professor of computer science at the University of Virginia and executive director of the Biocomplexity Institute.
Credit: UVA Biocomplexity Institute
Computer science professor Madhav Marathe is leading Biocomplexity Institute researchers at the University of Virginia to develop the “brains” behind a next-generation system designed to make buildings smarter, safer and healthier for their occupants.
The work is part of a national project funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, known as ARPA-H, involving eight U.S. universities and three industrial partners.
The project, called BRAVE for Bioaerosol Risk Assessment interVention Engineering and led by Virginia Tech, earned a contract for up to $40 million from ARPA-H’s Building Resilient Environments for Air and Total Health program. This ARPA-H “BREATHE” program focuses on sensor-based systems that monitor and respond to changes in indoor air quality as a way to revolutionize public health.
“Indoor air quality is an important and often overlooked public health issue,” said Jennifer L. West, dean of UVA’s School of Engineering and Applied Science. “The Biocomplexity Institute team will be able to make a real impact on people’s lives by bringing their diverse expertise in artificial intelligence and computational technologies to bear on a multifaceted problem.”
For UVA’s part in the BRAVE project, Marathe, executive director of the institute, and his team are building risk assessment and decision-making software for an intelligent indoor air system that can detect and respond to airborne threats, such as pathogens, in real time.
BRAVE’s collaborators think of it as an immune system for the building that perceives the threat and mounts appropriate defenses — such as increased ventilation, UV lights to kill mold or bacteria in the ducts, or even evacuation.
“Our team will build artificial intelligence-assisted multi-scale models and decision-support systems that translate raw sensor data into actionable insights,” Marathe said in a Biocomplexity Institute news release.
“This means not only detecting the presence of pathogens but also understanding the risk they pose in real time, and helping buildings respond intelligently to keep occupants healthy.”
UVA researchers, drawing on the institute’s core expertise and working with Signature Science LLC and the University of Michigan, will combine epidemiological modeling, AI and real-time data streams to create a system that can anticipate and mitigate outbreaks before they spread.
Virginia Tech’s team, under the direction of University Distinguished Professor Linsey Marr in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, will oversee the BRAVE project, including three subsets grouped by technical area: 1) Biosensors, led by Washington University in St. Louis; 2) fast modeling modules, led by UVA; and 3) engineering interventions, led by the University of California, Davis.
The BRAVE system will be piloted in childcare centers, settings that are often hotspots for respiratory infections. The UVA-developed software and decision-support system will help determine when and how to activate interventions, balancing health outcomes with energy efficiency and cost-effectiveness.