Last Tuesday (April 22) UTBiome members conducted microbial sampling at Battle Hall. Battle Hall is a beautifully unique building and is the only academic building on campus listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Architecture and Planning Library - located on the 2nd floor - is one of the focal points of the building and that is where we conducted the bulk of our sampling. We took wipe samples, measured indoor particle concentrations with an AeroTrak device, and took simultaneous indoor and outdoor aerosol samples with button samplers.
We also took several swab and wipe samples near the building doors leading to west mall on the 1st floor, and along the building stairwell and corridors. We are looking forward to assessing these samples to see how much of an influence the outdoor microbial community has on the indoor microbial community.
The building is set for renovation in a few years and it will also be really interesting to see how our pre-renovation samples differ from post-renovation samples taken in the future.
Shahana Khurshid (and Jp).
