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IndoorChem: Building a Science Community in the Chemistry of Indoor Environments
MARINA VANCE, Delphine K. Farmer, Julia Bakker-Arkema, Sameer Patel, University of Colorado Boulder
Abstract Number: 581
Working Group: Translating Aerosol Research for Societal Impact: Science Communication and Public Outreach
Abstract
Indoor chemistry is a relatively new field that combines expertise from atmospheric chemistry, indoor air quality, building science, and other areas, to further our understanding of the spaces where we spend the vast majority of our time. The IndoorChem community was launched in 2017 to foster the growth of this research community and to communicate its findings with the world. In this presentation, we describe the community building strategies developed for this project, activities performed for each strategy, and major outcomes so far. IndoorChem incorporates two main strategies: (1) internal community building, which aims to bring together researchers in the field to multiply the potential for scientific discovery through collaboration, and (2) external community building, which aims to communicate the science in this program with adjacent scientific fields, other stakeholders, and the public. Activities promoting internal and external community building ranged from science meetings and scientific field campaigns to social media presence, a website and blog, a newsletter, a YouTube channel, and more. This work will quantify the rate of community building through a variety of metrics, such as the growth of the scientific network in terms of the diversity of co-authorships and the outreach to the public in terms of social media reach metrics, over the past 4 years, plans for the continued growth of the network, and lessons learned so far.