In partnership with researchers at Virginia Tech and Emory University, as well as U of M faculty in the School of Public Health, Medical School, and LS&A, members of the Wiggi lab are working to better understand and mitigate influenza transmission in the indoor environment.

Funded by Flu Lab, the team involved in this work consists of engineers, clinicians, and scientists aiming to leverage interdisciplinary expertise to comprehensively examine how our built environment may influence transmission of respiratory pathogens. Our groups ultimate goal is to develop methods to quantify levels and/or risk of transmission, which can be used to evaluate potential mitigation strategies.

We are using our knowledge of environmental sampling and virus measurements to optimize the collection, storage, and detection of environmental and clinical samples. We apply our methods for the regular surveillance of day care settings with the goal of understanding the effects of outbreaks and mitigation strategies on infectious disease risks.