GRC Fluids and Health 2022: Fluids in Disease Transmission and Contamination

The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated how a respiratory pathogen that emerged in one part of the world can quickly spread globally, paralyze entire economies, and bring local and national healthcare delivery systems to the brink of collapse. Early successes in the use of non-medical interventions to reduce the spread of COVID-19 have highlighted the need for efficient and cost-effective technologies and solutions to mitigate and prevent the spread and transmission of respiratory pathogens in the built environment including residential/commercial buildings, schools, and healthcare/recreational facilities. However, a fundamental understanding of the transmission and spread of respiratory pathogens in the built environment and communities has remained elusive. The proposed Gordon Research Conference (GRC) will be devoted to the critical and important topic of "Fluids in Disease Transmission and Contamination." The GRC will bring together a group of experts and stakeholders from a broad range of disciplines and fields including fluid dynamics, environmental engineering, applied and computational mathematics, epidemiology, microbiology, virology, and public health. The conference will provide a unique forum for scientific, engineering, and public health communities that rarely meet or interact to discuss and assess the current level of understanding of the fluid dynamics and multiphase transport of pathogen and disease transmission along with its public health implications. This NSF award will enable the conference organizers to broaden participation to the GRC by providing travel grants (including registration costs) to early career researchers including women, junior faculty, post-doctoral researchers, and students from underrepresented groups. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted critical knowledge gaps in the fundamental understanding of the fluid dynamics and multiphase transport of pathogen and disease transmission. Pathogens are transported in fluid phases - air, water, and biological fluids including blood and saliva. In addition, fluid dynamics and multiphase transport play key roles in the design and implementation of efficient and cost-effective pathogen decontamination technologies. Yet, limited research has been devoted to the fluid dynamics and multiphase transport of pathogen and disease transmission in the built environment and communities. The proposed 5-day Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on "Fluids in Disease Transmission and Contamination" will be held in August 14-18, 2022, at Mount Holyoke College (MA). The conference will bring together a group of scientists, engineers, clinicians, public health researchers, and infection control practitioners at various stages of their careers and provide them with a forum to discuss the science, engineering, and healthcare implications of the fluid dynamics and multiphase transport/physics of pathogen and disease transmission. The conference program and discussion will be structured around nine sessions including an introductory session entitled "Front-line challenges in the prevention, control, and modelling of emerging infectious diseases and contamination" (Session 1), a session devoted to "Interfacial flows in contamination/decontamination: Surface-fluid interaction, fragmentation, droplets, and their phase change" (Session 7), and a session devoted to "Spillovers, transmission ecology and animal models, viral and bacterial diseases" (Session 8). 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.