(classical music)

- Hello, and thank you for tuning in

to Connections &
Directions, our University

of Michigan Civil and
Environmental Engineering podcast.

My name is Michele Santillan,

and I am the CEE Marketing
Communications Specialist

and host of this series.

During our podcast, we
are featuring members

of our CEE community and
how their work reflects

our mission of engineers
in service to society.

We will be highlighting
our strategic directions,

and our commitment to diversity,
equity, and inclusion.

CEE's five strategic directions are:

human habitat experience,
shaping resource flows,

adaptation, automation and
smart infrastructure finance.

Our guest for this podcast
is associate professor here

at Clack, Professor Clack has
a Bachelor of science degree

in aeronautical and astronomical
engineering from MIT,

and Master's and PhD degrees
in mechanical engineering

from the University of
California Berkeley.

Professor Clack's research focuses

on reducing the environmental
and health impacts

of a variety of airborne aerosols.

Professor Clack, thank
you for joining us today.

- It's my pleasure, Michele.

- Please share with our listeners

some details about your
research area and goals,

and how they align with
CEE's strategic directions

and our mission of engineers
in service to society.

- So what we do in our lab is
we're trying to understand,

you know, behavior of
these aerosols as they age,

as they undergo chemical
transformation in the atmosphere.

Or as a result of emission
from a combustion process.

And we are very interested
in designing technologies

to abate their emission, either to reduce

the physical emission of
the aerosol from its source,

or to blunt, or thwart its
potential health impact.

And so, those are two somewhat different

but, ultimately. related methods

for achieving the same objective, which is

to minimize the impact on
human health in the environment

of the aerosols that get
emitted to the atmosphere.

- Do you think that over
the past two and a half

to three years, as you
mentioned, because of COVID

that your area of research has accelerated

and that perhaps, you've
learned very quickly

how to respond to this particular issue,

but also you can use this
to serve you in the future?

- Absolutely, so the
last three years has been

a whirlwind for all of us, of course,

but it's been a particular
whirlwind for myself,

those in my group, and I
even have a startup company.

And so, through all three of those efforts

it's been a lot of activity
in the last three years.

And, you know, just to
set the kind of stage

for what we've been through, you know,

folks may not remember that
at the start of the pandemic

the medical and public health
communities were maintaining

a longstanding belief
that infectious diseases,

especially infectious viral diseases,

largely were unlikely to
be transmitted in the air.

There's some exceptions so measles

is an exception, you
know, it is understood

and accepted that measles can
be transmitted through the air

and same thing with tuberculosis.

But for things like influenza
and certainly for, you know,

a novel coronavirus like SARS-CoV-2

at the start of the
pandemic, the advice given

by medical professionals
was wash your hands,

cover your cough, things like that.

And so, for those of us
who deal with aerosols,

and those of us who deal
specifically with bio aerosols,

this was a very challenging time

because we were spending a lot

of effort trying to get our voices heard,

trying to get our expertise appreciated

by those who had the larger megaphone

of, "Here's how we
respond to the pandemic."

And so I think it's important
to recognize that we went

from a context where we
have this infectious disease

and we had very little
protections against it.

This was at the beginning 2019/2020,

beginning of the pandemic.

And, you know, the protective advice

that was being given was
one that, essentially,

dismissed what ultimately ended up being

the primary (indistinct) transmission,

which is through the air and so,

it's been very, very,
very much an active period

for those in the bio aerosol community.

And fortunately, you know, after I think

about eight or nine
months there was a shift,

both the US CDC and the
World Health Organization,

both changed their guidance
I think in late summer,

early fall of 2020 to acknowledge

the importance of airborne transmission.

And so, that opened the
door to things like,

well, you know, what does
it mean to have a pollutant

that's not emitted from a
smoke stack of a factory,

or the tailpipe of a truck,
but is emitted from, you know,

your roommate sitting
across the dining room table

from you, or something like that?

Or emitted from a parent
that is cuddling a child.

That's a very, very, very
different air quality regime,

a very, very different context in which

to think about how do
you provide protection.

So it's been very exciting, to be sure,

but it's also important,
I think, to just remember

that we weren't always this
aware of what an aerosol is.

We weren't always this
appreciative of the challenge

of an aerosol pollutant
that is not emitted

from an industrial process,
but is emitted from humans.

Now, I'll just make one
one additional point.

You know, it's actually
added kind of irony,

or surrealism for me
because before the pandemic

we were still doing research in the area

of airborne pathogen
control and mitigation.

But because, before the
pandemic, there really wasn't

much traction in the
area of human diseases

most of the work that we
were doing was focused

on animal agriculture,
so before the pandemic,

2015, 2016, 2017 most of the appreciation

for what we were doing
came from pig farmers,

and chicken farmers whereas, you know,

medical professionals,
public health professionals

at that time generally
did not see influenza,

or COVID as being a threat through the air

pig farmers and chicken
farmers absolutely understood

that their livestock were at
risk from airborne diseases,

airborne infectious diseases
that could be transmitted

into their barns through
their ventilation air.

So it's just very poignant for me that,

you know, ultimately the appreciation

for what we do started out
not in saving humanity,

but in saving, you
know, pigs and chickens.

- How specifically do you
bring strategic directions

into your research and your teaching,

and what strategic
direction, or directions

would you say most
applies in your situation?

- Yeah so, the work that
I do is primarily relating

to air quality, both
indoor air and outdoor air.

And, in general as a
department, we've put that

into the human habitat
strategic direction.

And so, it's optimizing the design

of places where humans will live.

And that includes both, you
know, terrestrially on Earth,

as well as even, you
know, space exploration.

And so, you know, designing, optimizing,

measuring, characterizing air quality

in these spaces has always been important.

Traditionally, those measurements

and those air quality standards

have been based on
chemical air contaminants.

And, you know, as the
last three years has shown

there is a risk now that we
have a new appreciation for

from biological air contaminants.

And there are no standards for that,

for a number of reasons,
not the least being

that, you know, each one of us could be

a source of a biological air contaminant.

So how do you regulate
another human being, right?

So there's a need for reconsideration

of how we approach air
quality when regulation

is likely not going to be a solution,

but the outcomes of
exposure can be quite severe

as we saw from the COVID pandemic.

In terms of... Was the other part

of the question in the classroom?

- Yes, in the classroom, also.

- Yes so, I teach primarily two courses.

One is undergraduate thermodynamics

and the other is a graduate course

in air quality engineering.

Undergraduate thermodynamics is, you know,

not a favorite course of students,

even outside of our department,

you talk to mechanical engineers,

chemical engineers, thermo,
you could talk to someone,

a layperson who's never
taken a thermo course

and they hear things about thermo.

But I try and bring in everyday examples

of thermodynamic principles and, you know,

there are times when my
just being in the classroom

can be an element where
I can highlight DEI.

So, for example, there's a principle

in thermodynamics called a phase diagram.

And oftentimes, it's
hard for students to...

Even when they've seen an
image of a phase diagram,

it's hard for them to
understand how to use it

and how to incorporate it
into a thermodynamic analysis.

And one of the strategies
for being successful at that

is first knowing where you
are on the phase diagram.

So the analogy would be like
using an old-fashioned map.

You can't use a map to get somewhere,

unless you can find where you
currently are on that map.

And so, you know, I could easily just go

with that analogy in teaching
about using a phase diagram,

but I actually incorporate
part of my identity.

I talk about my husband,
who has a very poor sense

of direction, and I talk
about how before, you know,

Google Maps and smartphones,
I would get calls

from him saying, "I'm
lost, help me get home."

And I would ask him,
"Well, where are you?"

And he would say, "I don't know."

And the frustration was, "I
absolutely can't help you

"unless I know where you are."

And so even, and I remember
when I first started doing that,

maybe seven or eight years
ago here at Michigan,

I remember doing it consciously.

And every year, you know,
there'd be a little titter,

a little twitter in the
classroom when I did it.

And it's interesting to see now

that that doesn't happen anymore, right?

So I can make that analogy, I can,

you know, refer to my husband,

and there's no reaction
from the students at all.

And so, I appreciate that.

So now maybe I have to find another way

to incorporate DEI into the course.

In the graduate course
it's a little easier,

partly because things like awareness

of environmental justice issues

means that students
already come to the course

thinking about neighborhoods
predominantly populated

by either low income families,
or Black and Brown families.

And those neighborhoods
disproportionately tend

to be the places where
heavy industry is placed,

where heavy polluters are placed, and then

that added environmental
burden on those neighborhoods

just because they happen to be low income,

or some other circumstances.

So we have conversations
about that especially, again,

in the graduate course,
we have the flexibility,

I have the flexibility of having
students do term projects.

And we talk about, okay
well, you know, certainly,

for air quality, you
could do a term project

where you design this air
pollution control device,

but you could also do a term project

where you examine an
environmental justice issue

involving air pollution around, let's say,

the Marathon Refinery
in southwest Detroit.

Or you could do an
environmental justice issue

around like cancer alley in Louisiana

along the Mississippi River
and so it's much easier

in an advanced course where you have moved

beyond fundamental principles,
and now you're going

into applications, you're
going into risk analysis,

you're going into the actual implications

of what environmental exposures have,

and you can bring in these
real world scenarios.

So it's much easier in a graduate course

than it is an undergraduate course.

- And then likewise,
how does that influence

some of your direct research
when you're looking at

the DEI issues, as you mentioned
with environmental justice

and the issues that that involves?

- Yeah so, most of my research
now has been in the...

You know, last 5 or 10 years has been

on bio aerosols or airborne pathogens.

But before that, my research was focused

on airborne toxic metals, so
things like mercury emitted

from burning coal and things like that.

And so, there was a very,
you know, direct tie

between the work that
I was doing to reduce

the amount of mercury emitted
from these power plants,

and where that mercury
might end up depositing

in a watershed being taken
up by vegetation and fish

and then, ultimately,
being eaten by humans.

So anytime, almost anytime and, you know,

whether it's an environmental
engineering course,

or environmental engineering research,

or mechanical engineering
research, I think,

you know, almost anytime
you're dealing with, you know,

a residual or you're
dealing with some byproduct

of a process whose release
is either uncontrolled,

or not controlled enough
you have these issues.

And so, it's been taking into account

where these exposures
occur, whether it's talking

about toxic metals, or
whether it's talking

about patterns where
these exposures occur.

That's been a part of my
research or, at least,

an element of how we
think about our research

for quite a while.

It isn't the core of what we do.

So there are researchers who, for example,

measure exposures to toxic metals

around certain sources
of, you know, we're more

I would say maybe in the
trenches, we're trying

to design the technologies that prevent

the release of those
pollutants in the first place

as opposed to measuring the concentration

and the ultimate exposure of the pollutant

once it gets out into the environment.

So we're trying to prevent
the exposure altogether.

- Okay, that sounds great.

Is there anything else
that you would like to add?

- Yeah, I mean, it's been, you know,

a really interesting
transition for me, you know,

the core of my research has
always been around aerosols.

Initially, it started
out as aerosols produced

from combustion, and now more recently

it's biological aerosols,
viruses and bacteria.

But to me, you know, the takeaway message

is, you know, once you have
kind of a core set of skills,

a core understanding, a
core area of engineering

that you're really quite
proficient at, you can take that

and you can apply it to a lot
of different needs, right?

So, you know, I went from
coal combustion to COVID,

and it was more or less seamless, right?

They're very different things,

but the aerosol principles
are still the same.

So I would encourage students
when they're looking at,

you know, courses to take,
or careers to pursue,

or majors, you know, try and find, or try,

and identify that thing that they think

likely will be their core skillset.

And then, wherever and whatever department

they happen to be in
try and build that up.

It doesn't have to be
environmental engineering

that is looking at, you
know, biological aerosols,

viruses, and bacteria.

It could be mechanical engineers,

chemical engineers, aerosol scientists,

public health researchers,
epidemiologists.

It doesn't matter as long as you're good

at what you do and that core skillset.

- Okay, that's a great way to end

on the interview, thank you so much.

- Thank you.

(classical music)

- Thank you for listening
to our podcast conversation.

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