• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer
Logo for the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Michigan
  • Giving
  • News and Events
  • Contact

  • About
    • History
    • Strategic Directions
    • Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
      • CEE DEI Committee
      • DEI Resources
      • Have a concern?
    • Alumni
      • CEE Friends Association
        • CEEFA Board
      • Award Winners
    • Giving
      • Giving Legacy
    • Leadership and Governance
    • Faculty Search
      • Faculty Position in Environmental Engineering
      • Faculty Position in Mobility and Transportation Systems
    • Contact
      • Student Services Contacts
      • Master’s Advising Contacts
      • Undergraduate Advising Contacts
  • Undergraduate Studies
    • BSE Degree in Civil Engineering
    • BSE Degree in Environmental Engineering
    • Minor in Civil Engineering
    • Minor in Environmental Engineering
    • FocusCEE
      • Community Policy and Planning
      • Smart Cities
      • Sustainability
    • Undergraduate Opportunities
      • Undergraduate Externship
      • Student Research and Employment
        • CEE SURE/SROP Projects 2022
    • Schedule an Advising Appointment
    • Declare Your Major
    • Careers in CEE
      • What is a Civil or Environmental Engineer?
      • Career Pathways
      • Employers of CEE Graduates
      • How to Recruit CEE Graduates
    • Undergraduate Student Advisory Council
    • Student Life
  • Graduate Studies
    • Master’s Programs
    • PhD Programs
      • PhD Mentoring Framework
      • PhD Candidate Roster
    • Pelham Scholars Program
    • Online Learning
      • Construction Engineering and Management MasterTrack™
    • Admissions Information
      • International Applicants
      • Sequential Undergraduate/Graduate Studies (SUGS) Applicants
    • Graduate Handbook
    • Graduate Student Advisory Council
    • Student Life
  • People
    • Faculty
      • Affiliated Faculty
      • Core Faculty
      • Emeritus Faculty
    • Postdocs
    • Researchers
    • Staff
      • Administrative
      • Finance
      • Human Resources
      • IT & Web
      • Laboratory Technicians
      • Purchasing
      • Student Services
  • Research
    • New Grants
    • Civil Infrastructure Systems
      • Construction Engineering and Management
      • Geotechnical Engineering
      • Intelligent Systems
      • Next Generation Transportation Systems
      • Structural and Materials Engineering
    • Environment and Water Resources
      • Ecohydrology and Hydraulic Engineering
      • Energy and Clean Technology
      • Environmental Chemistry and Soil Physics
      • Environmental Microbiology and Biotechnology
    • Smart Infrastructure Finance
    • Urban Collaboratory
    • Facilities
      • Advanced Materials Research
      • Cementitious Composites
      • Center of Excellence in Bridges and Structures
      • Computational Community Resilience
      • Computational Structural Simulation
      • Construction Engineering Lab
      • Geotechnical Engineering Labs
      • Intelligent Structural Technology
      • Next Generation Infrastructure
      • Next Generation Transportation Systems Research Facilities
      • Pavement Research Center of Excellence
      • Structural Engineering Lab
  • Resources
    • Shipping
    • Purchasing
      • Purchasing Frequently Asked Questions
    • Reimbursement
    • IT Resources
    • Lab Safety
      • Lab Safety Basics
      • Minimum Training Requirements
    • Lab Requests and Procedures
    • Room Requests
    • Faculty Intranet
    • Giving
    • News and Events
    • Contact

Interdisciplinary study seeks to mitigate transmission of respiratory viral diseases such as flu and COVID-19 in children

Michigan Engineering researchers will help reveal pathways for virus detection and transmission

Written by: michiganengineering

May 23, 2022

portrait of the researcher krista wiggintonKrista Wigginton

Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Portrait of Herek Clack, featured researcher in this storyHerek Clack

Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

EXPERTS:

A pair of Michigan Engineering professors will investigate the transmission of the flu and other respiratory illnesses, including coronaviruses, in child care settings. And they’ll receive some help from ferrets and child-friendly robots – not to mention a host of experts from multiple universities – along the way.

They are part of a team led by Linsey Marr, Charles P. Lunsford Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech, with $8.8 million in funding from Flu Lab, an organization that supports bold approaches to defeat influenza. 

“By studying how influenza and other respiratory illnesses spread, we aim to improve our safeguards for preventing infection,” said Krista Wigginton, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Michigan, who serves as the lead for thrust one of the project.

A woman with blue eyes and blonde hair smiling, She's wearing a blue dress.
Krista Wigginton

Called MITIGATE FLU (Multidisciplinary InvesTIGation to Ease inFLUenza), the project brings together a convergence of disciplines with researchers from Michigan Medicine and the U-M School of Public Health as well as experts in virology, immunology, and modeling of disease ecology at the University of Pittsburgh, Georgetown University, and Emory University. By the end of the four-year study, researchers hope to understand how behavioral and environmental factors affect transmission rates and identify the most effective interventions. Children in child care centers have high rates of respiratory illnesses due to their immature immune systems, offering researchers an ideal setting to evaluate the virus and identify measures to reduce exposure. 

“The way that we’ve been studying flu hasn’t been giving us the answers that we need to prevent transmission, but this project may change that,” said Herek Clack, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering. 

The project will be done in three thrusts with researchers from Michigan Engineering contributing to each stage of the project. The first thtust will seek to identify new methods for detecting influenza to determine principal exposure pathways among children.

“Our goal is to innovate flu virus detection in these indoor settings to help us understand when children are exposed to the viruses and how many viruses they are exposed to,” said Wigginton.

To detect the virus, the team will program Embodied Moxie to engage with children in face-to-face interactions while collecting air and surface samples of viruses.  In the final thrust of the project, the robots will be deployed into six child care centers across southeast Michigan. Additionally, researchers will identify new methods to differentiate between infectious and non-infectious respiratory viruses.

“When a virus leaves one’s mouth in a droplet of spittle, how far does that droplet travel? How long does the virus remain infectious in that spittle droplet, while it’s evaporating on that tabletop surface? If somebody comes along and wipes their hand across it and touches their eye, what’s that transmission rate?” said Clack. “Getting to these details will help us differentiate between viral RNA that has no capability to infect you versus a virus that can actually infect you.”

A Black man, Herek Clack, smiling at the camera. He's wearing a black turtleneck
Herek Clack

Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and Emory University will lead thrust two of the project, using animal models to reveal principal modes of transmission for influenza and other respiratory viruses. These include aerosols, droplets and contaminated surfaces, across a range of indoor humidity, temperature, and chemical air contaminant levels. It’s necessary to mimic these environmental conditions since new research refutes long-standing studies suggesting that the virus degrades when humidity increases.

Researchers will examine virus transmissibility among groups of ferrets given that their behavior patterns closely align with those of children. Michigan Engineering will support this project thrust by designing environmentally controlled aerosol generation and enclosures for testing transmission. Researchers will also test interventions that could be translated into child care settings, including various air purification systems.

The project’s third and final thrust focuses on environmental factors driving flu transmission in child care centers sourced through Michigan Medicine’s child care infections surveillance program. This thrust, led by U-M’s School of Public Health, will see the deployment of robots developed in thrust one.

“This is the dream team and we have the expertise to tackle this research wholeheartedly,” said Clack. “At every one of these intersections or boundaries between disciplines, there are opportunities to close some of the chasms in our understanding of the flu.”


MEDIA CONTACT

Lanard Ingram

Lanard Ingram

Associate Director of News and Communications

(734) 763-7087

lanard@umich.edu

Explore: Civil and Environmental Engineering Health Research Adaptation COVID-19 Herek Clack Human Habitat Experience Krista Wigginton

Footer

Logo for Michigan Engineering at the University of Michigan

  • Giving
  • News and Events
  • Contact
  • Sign up for our newsletter
  • U-M Engineering Home
  • Strategic Vision
  • Graduate and Professional
  • Undergraduate
  • U-M Engineering Research News
  • U-M Home

  • Giving
  • News and Events
  • Contact
  • Sign up for our newsletter

© 2022 The Regents of the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI 48109 USA Privacy Policy | Non-Discrimination Policy | Campus Safety

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • YouTube