One of the objectives of Sloan's Indoor Environment program is to support targets of opportunity that will help to advance research and knowledge about the indoor microbial environment. Funds from this grant support research on the indoor microbial environment by a team of scientists at the University of California, Berkeley. Their research plan has three objectives: 1) to investigate the processes of microbial community assembly in the indoor environment; 2) to obtain an understanding of the relationship between building design, external climate, and interior microbial community; and 3) to improve instrumentation to measure volatile, organic compounds derived from microbes, microbial toxins, and allergens in indoor air. The Berkeley team's project complements existing Foundation grants supporting the Biology and Built Environment Center at the University of Oregon, which is developing a predictive science of the built environment microbiome through partnerships between architects and biologists; a major ongoing research project to catalog the indoor microbial world at the University of Colorado at Boulder; a project to study New York City air and to develop a single cell genomics pipeline at the J. Craig Venter Institute, and efforts by the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole to examine the rare biosphere in drinking water.

One of the objectives of the Foundation's Indoor Environment (IE) program is to establish a multi-disciplinary network of researchers and practitioners that will build the community and organize specialized workshops, annual meetings of grantees, and a capstone event. This grant will fund noted evolutionary biologist Jonathan Eisen and colleagues at the University of California, in collaboration with Hal Levin, a prominent building sciences expert, in their efforts to create the microbiomes of Built Environments network (microBEnet). The team plans to make use of diverse web-based, web-enabled, and in-person strategies to build a vibrant online and real community. Over the next three years, microBEnet will conduct activities in three areas: among existing Foundation grantees, with researchers in related disciplines, and with a broader public and scientific community. Among current Sloan grantees, the network will organize annual meetings and develop a wiki for communication. With researchers in related disciplines, microBEnet will organize special sessions at high profile meetings, and develop web communication resources.