 Three important things we're trying to do through this event One is celebrate another is reflect and another is looking forward, right? Those three elements are there Celebrating I mean the three colleagues the outstanding colleagues. We're recognizing today Brandon bore Shweta Singh and Joaquin go knee our outstanding colleagues, of course But the first and foremost we're here to celebrate their success in becoming tenured associate professors As they know and many of us in the room. It's not an easy thing to do It's it's a really really tough slog and we're here to celebrate that first and foremost a second is really It's an opportunity for these outstanding colleagues to reflect upon What they did what decisions they took that led to success and this is not necessarily about the technical details Which paper they wrote or not, but key decisions that they made and key pathways what they tried that worked What are the untrodden paths that they took that helped them get to where they are? And that's why we have a lot of students and postdocs Here as well as well as other assistant professors who can look to you all as role models For following that path forward as well third element is looking ahead looking to the future It's an opportunity for these colleagues kind of present now that they've got you know past this hurdle What's this next phase of their career going to look like and it's a great opportunity by the way for those who are doing this To build new relationships and new collaborations. We've had many faculty who've done this Who've gotten to know other colleagues and started collaborations with them that they didn't used to do in the past, right? So it's an opportunity to look forward into collaborating more One of the things I tell all new faculty and engineering is if within first five years You're not extensively collaborating across the disciplines. It's a missed opportunity if in the first ten years You're not extensively collaborating around the university. It's a missed opportunity. So That third part of their talks is going to reflect on what they're looking forward to doing in the next few years So without further ado, let's begin Who is it? Luna Lou the interim head of civil engineering Thank you Thanks, everyone to join us today to celebrate one of our rising star at a civil engineering also at Purdue and Professor Brandon board and Brandon has joined Purdue civil engineering in 2015 from UT Austin, right? Where he get his PhD and during that time if he already received many prestigious award including NSF graduate fellowship and to also have I'm sorry, you have another award. Please remind me. Yeah, Fulbright a scholarship and a study in Hemsky, right? University in Finland. All right So we are very excited to have the Brandon come here Of course that he was you know, it's not a surprise to us he has been really successful in the last six years and Brandon has published the 46 papers and many of them in very prestigious journals such as Science at events nature nanotechnology and you may know Brandon for his work What we call dirty baby robots But actually he's really his work is at an intersect of the building science and the microbiology and Some of the physics and study on the human behavior, right? So and Brandon's work has been highlighted by so many national mediums such as the CNN, right? And I remember that and then So and also Brandon has has been received the many high prestigious award such as an SF career award and also Hemsky leadership research leadership award at Produce civil engineering and you also receive the outstanding Graduate advisor award, right? And the brand is also very actively engaged to graduate on the graduate students in the classroom and In the research, I think over the past six years You have involved over 200 on the grad students and students in his research Not only he has received the many recognitions But many of his students has received the recognitions from Ashry and all the other Associations, so we further do and I would like to invite the Brandon professor board come to The stage and to reflect and share with us of your success Okay, thank you professor Lou for that very nice introduction and professor ramen for organizing this event. So good morning My name is Brandon bore and I am now an associate professor in the Lyle school of civil engineering I'm part of the architectural engineering group and some of my colleagues are here today And our group focuses on buildings and my research is focused on air quality inside buildings So I like to kind of give a background on my personal history academic journey to Purdue and some of my accomplishments at Purdue So I like to start with my family, so I would not be here today if it was not for My family and their love and support throughout my life So here are some photos of my family My parents you can see here my father Brian bore and my mother Lyle bore My sister Lauren bore and my better half who's in the room today So my parents have always encouraged me to pursue my education. I Remember when I was a kid, I of course would play if things like Legos and they suggested that I should become a Architect or an engineer. I remember in sixth grade Presenting that to people in the classroom and now I'm an architectural engineer Which I think is interesting My sister is shown there on the right and my Brother-in-law brother-in-law Danny of my sister is a firefighter and a paramedic in Howard County, Maryland And my brother-in-law is a nurse So they have very tough jobs and they've recently welcomed two children. I have a niece and a nephew now also my wife's family shown there at the bottom and My cats I don't have any human children yet, but I do have some cat children Which are an important part of my life and provide a lot of comfort in the home And they've been with us for some time So my academic journey started in high school I grew up in Columbia, Maryland, which is in Howard County, which is between Baltimore, Maryland and Washington, DC I went to Longreach High School, which is a public high school in the county And one thing that was unique about Longreach is that they had a technology magnet program and that allowed me to get exposure to engineering at a young age and We had the opportunity to participate in a variety of engineering projects Some are shown here and these are team-based projects and I think really helped get me on track in engineering So we had the Team America rocketry challenge Bot ball, which some of you may know Also an IEEE robotics competition and then I had the opportunity to work at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab for one year doing research on Evaluating the thrust produced by model rocket motors One thing that was nice is that our rocketry team. We made the national finals in 2004 and the Baltimore Sun had a feature on our team And here I am in the photograph preparing a model rocket with a few of my peers and What's nice is that we're quoted here and We had a successful rocket launch and our goal was to launch these rockets to about 1200 feet and carry two eggs back to the ground safely And our launch was successful and I have a quote here saying it was great added Branden-Boer 16 who's in the 11th grade My father is also quoted in the article in the bottom right hand corner So this rocketry experience was great for me really opened my eyes to engineering and working as part of a team To design something to build something Really very good experience After high school, I went to a small college in Pennsylvania in New York, Pennsylvania Which at one point was the capital of the United States I pursued a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering York is a small school But does have an ABET accredited mechanical engineering program and the one thing that my parents and I liked about your college was that it had a co-op program like we have here at Purdue and Through my co-op experience. I was able to work for eight months full-time at NIST Which is a National Institute of Standards and Technology Which was about an hour and a half from my parents home in Gaithersburg, Maryland And at NIST I worked with the building and fire research lab in the indoor air quality and ventilation group The name has since changed, but it was called BFRL at the time and that really opened my eyes to doing research You know, I went to a small school. We didn't have undergraduate research opportunities, but at NIST I was able to work with a Bunch of researchers on different indoor air quality projects really enjoy that experience And that's what you know piqued my interest in pursuing research on indoor air quality as a graduate student One thing that was nice was that when I was there there was a like a baking competition Which I won with this design of the BFRL logo With the fire and the building there By very nice experience and these co-op experience Experiences which are important for our students here very valuable for me as well And I also worked on a design project my senior year through the formula SAE competition I helped design and build the suspension system specifically the roll bar We were called YC racing for your college racing. We competed at the National event in 24 or 2004 and you can see me up there as doing some TIG welding of the frame of the car and Then on the right there was our successful tilt test to make sure that the car did not roll over After your college I went to the University of Texas at Austin in Austin, Texas Where I received my master's and PhD I received my PhD in 2015 and There I was part of the architectural engineering group, you know similar in many ways to our group here it was Very good experience working with you know top-notch students from around the world great faculty very supportive faculty My advisors are shown up here in this photo. We're doing the hokum horns at my dissertation defense My advisors were professor Attila Nova-Selic and professor Ying Zhu and the focus of my research as a graduate student was Looking at indoor air quality specifically What pollutants were exposed to in the bedroom in the sleep micro environment as well as looking at dust resuspension As a PhD student I had the opportunity to spend about two and a half two and a half years in Finland living in Espo Finland and Helsinki Finland thanks to support from a Fulbright grant and NSF Nordic Research Opportunity Grant And there I worked at the VTT Technical Research Center of Finland And the University of Helsinki and Toy Tervis Light Dose which is the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health so that Open my eyes to a bunch of different research specifically on aerosol science Finland has very good research on aerosols atmospheric aerosols indoor aerosols. I really enjoyed working there had the opportunity to explore much of the country including Going in the sauna and then jumping into Freezing water in the hole in the ice as well as going up near the Arctic Circle in Roe, Miami And this is also a photo me in Austin, Texas where I went to the first Formula one race that was held there at the Circuit of Americas back in 2012 I believe it was So my experience as a graduate student paired me well to become a professor here at Purdue here in Indiana And I joined Purdue right after I graduated from UT Austin and my research here is focused on indoor air quality Specifically looking at pollutants in the air and the factors that affect them have worked with many great undergraduate and graduate students Help create two courses one on thermodynamics for civil engineering students and one on indoor air quality and then participated in a variety of service activities So I like to acknowledge the great PhD students. I've worked with many of which are in the room today A number of them have received very prestigious awards. I'm sure they'll all receive awards in the future Tianren was my first PhD student. He'll be joining the University of Cincinnati in the fall as an assistant professor of architectural engineering Danielle has been with me for a long time jingling as well satya Chung Zhu Jordan and Brian will be starting in the fall as PhD students I've also the opportunity to collaborate with a bunch of faculty around campus in civil engineering environment when architectural engineering in chemistry and psychology And this has allowed us to look at indoor air from different perspectives, which has been very helpful for my research I'm fortunate to receive some funding from NSF EPA And some other agencies over the years and then use that funding to produce some hopefully impactful papers on indoor air quality on human exposure to pollutants and so forth I Made a few I think somewhat meaningful research discoveries over the years one looking at how babies resuspend dust Another looking at how nanoparticles are formed in the air Some other projects looking at volatile chemicals and their emissions and transformations in the air And as well as developing a new industry test methodologies for evaluating HVAC filters Big part of what I've done at Purdue in terms of service has been my epics team So epics is engineering projects and community service and I created the global air quality checkers team Back in 2016 and we have worked on a project in Kenya for many years I've got two straight study of broad trips to Nandi Kenya and Western Kenya We built a test kitchen at Purdue and our goal there was to try to reduce exposure to Particulate matter and biomass burning kitchens. We now have a local project here in Lafayette. I'm also engaged in my professional organizations through various voting member positions and leadership positions and then also hold a few editorial board positions in some top journals in my field and My research has been featured in our CE impact magazine We've had a number of articles about myself and my students over the years Which has been very nice to kind of highlight our accomplishments also in the national international news NPR CNN and and so forth and Lastly, you know outside of research Do try to maintain somewhat of a balanced life? Enjoy cooking. Thanks a lot to my mother Make pizza enjoy doing that Enjoy taking walks through Happy Hollow Park and being around nature Marching movies and also following Purdue basketball and football So thank you. That's a little bit about my background and please let me know if you have any questions Fantastic. Yeah, so Brenda you clearly is Truly reflective produce civil engineering spirit as we always say pursue excellence and Amplify the impact. I think you have done very well in Every aspect of teaching research learning and the impacts are so many evidence So now we're going to open the floor for questions for Yes For a general knowledge based Your research is on air quality typically indoor how bad is the inside air compared to outside? That's a good question. So In general at least here in the United States, I would say it's often much worse indoors and outdoors In other parts of the world the opposite may be true But what we know is that there's just many sources of indoor air pollution and We often don't ventilate building so well so I can trap some of that pollution and extend our exposures So concentrations of many different pollutants whether they're in the gas phase or particle phase can be You know factor of ten or or more higher than the surrounding outdoor environment And that's because the things like cooking combustion cleaning off gassing from building materials people all of us And other things personal care products and so forth I'm Jess mayor. I handle communications for environmental and ecological engineering and your courtesy faculty member We were just talking about air quality. I was just wondering in general if you could talk about how your work kind of Overlaps with environmental challenges and issues and why you pursue that Yeah, so I I think that Really on I think I realized air pollution was an important environmental health issue and indoor air specifically because we spend much of our time indoors and I thought it was very interesting, you know the fundamental science of air quality engineering In terms of environmental engineering, you know, I'm in architectural engineering group So we study buildings and I think there's obviously a lot of overlap between what I do and you know architectural and environmental engineering Maybe you can look at architectural engineering as environmental engineering of buildings in a way So I think Certainly air quality has been maybe not given it as much attention as other fields and environmental engineering like water quality And so forth and certainly needs to be given more attention I think the COVID-19 pandemic I kind of highlighted that that you know buildings and their ventilation systems were not really well set up to deal with the transmission of airborne viruses Greg Shaver a Herrick labs director Brandon wonderful job. I mean incredible journey. You're on your trajectories very bright What can we do to help you? That's a good question. I Mean my work is mostly experimental so I think as all experimentalists, you know Having great facilities is important part of what we do and we do have great facilities here Which have allowed us to make make discoveries that we have made And I think continued investment in that especially at Herrick labs of all the different facilities. We have theirs is very important You know, I do think in terms of building science and so forth. We do have some of the best facilities in the world here Purdue Which allows us to do some really interesting research Brandon I had a quick question by the way. Are you sure that was not a set up question before? Okay? Okay, I Guess looking ahead, you know five years fast forwarding, you know, what are some of the big challenges? Now the the weight of tenure is off your back What is that? What's the passion project for you now up ahead? What what are you going to do to change the world and? air quality and so on I Think one thing that is very interesting today is you know sensors and sensing sensing of the built environment and We have made a lot of progress in making better sensors to measure different types of air pollutants There's a lot more that we can do and you know Certainly, I can envision that there's a lot of work to you know set up these massive air pollution sensor networks outside and inside In HVAC systems to track, you know our exposures to air pollutants To measure things that we don't conventionally measure for example like government air quality monitoring stations Certainly this is important not only in this country, but globally where there's really a sparsity of air quality data being collected For example in parts of Africa Middle East South America So there's a lot of opportunity there for kind of massive air quality monitoring and then using that data to Control buildings in their HVAC systems to Link exposures to health outcomes things like that. So I think that's certainly something I like to be a part of So Brandon, maybe I can ask you a question Since we have many Junior faculty and some of grad students here So we'll be great if you can share some of you know your strategy How that make you being so successful in a shorter period of time and they establish a very Interdiscipline research and collaboration work within Purdue and also outside of the Purdue So what advice you can give it to the students and some junior faculty here? I Think for me, you know a lot of my Successes is related to my intellectual curiosity, and I think that's what drives me moving forward And I think for you know graduate students that they're curious and passionate about you know their research I think that's a good driving force for them for their careers You know, there's a lot of exciting things to investigate certainly in the research that we do And obviously many engineering fields. So I think that kind of curiosity to kind of discover things that people have not looked at before Can really help, you know motivate you through the ups and downs of tenure And then I think having supportive family environment is very important Supportive faculty supportive university and You know we're all gonna have setbacks in our careers especially on tenure track and you know just trying to keep pushing forward Is very important. So not giving up and You know learn from mistakes that you make We're all gonna make mistakes and and try to do better and Yeah, any other questions for Brandon. All right, thank you Brandon for a wonderful