Overview

Aims and objectives

The aim of this school is to give the student an understanding of and hands-on experience with the basic bioaerosol concepts and techniques, which will allow them to design and carry out experimental and environmental bioaerosol studies.

Background and course content

Primary biological aerosol particles (PBAP) have been widely recognized as a main aerosol species in the troposphere, with far-reaching implications for atmospheric chemistry and physics, biogeography, epidemiology, and meteorology. Study of PBAP relies on a combination of disciplines, which will be introduced during the summer school. The school will cover: (1) the interrelations between PBAP and the processes of cloud formation, precipitation development, as well as chemical processing in the atmosphere; (2) health and environmental effects of PBAP; (3) microbial physiology in the atmosphere and its relevance for microbial dispersal and biogeography. Participants will gain both theoretical and hands-on experience for studying these topics using a range of techniques and instruments. Finally, there will be opportunities to discuss the challenges facing researchers in the field.

Audience

This course is aimed at natural scientists, i.e. microbiologists, physicist, chemists, meteorologists, modellers, environmental scientists, medical students, who are interested or already working in aerobiology-related fields. The audience is primarily PhD students, early career scientists and advanced Msc students.

Syllabus, tools and resources

The course will be split into two parts. The first part will be more theoretical and will include lectures, discussion and journal club activities. The second part will be project work in small groups that will select a specific scientific question, which they will address experimentally.

During this summer school you will learn about:

Bioaerosol generation in the laboratory: SLAG, bubble tank
Bioaerosol collections by diverse methods, i.e. impingers, filter collectors, impactors
The emphasis will be on the offline analysis of (bio)aerosols: cold-stage measurements of INPs, microscopy, flow cytometry, nuclear acids extraction and qPCR
You will also learn about some of the online analysis of (bio)aerosols in the laboratory and in the environment: e.g. OPS, SMPS

Learning outcomes and competences

Major leaning outcomes

After completing this school, the students will be able to:

understand key issues related to primary biological aerosol particles, such as ice nucleation, transformation of atmospheric chemicals, and dispersal to new terrestrial environments.
apply the understanding of key issues related to primary biological aerosol particles to the Arctic environment.
explain how biological aerosols are different from non-biological aerosols.
describe, apply and discuss the advantage/disadvantages of different on-line (OPS, SMPS, CCNc) and off-line measurement techniques (ice nucleation assays, microscopy, flow cytometry, DNA extraction, qPCR).
apply and contrast different techniques of bioaerosol generation in laboratory setting.
apply and contrast different bioaerosol sampling techniques in both laboratory and environmental setting.
understand and interpret results generated by different on-line and off-line measurement techniques.
design bioaerosol laboratory and field experiments, i.e. develop meaningful hypothesis and reflect on different analytical methods that could be used to address the hypothesis.

Other leaning outcomes

After completing this school, the students will be able to:

discuss interdisciplinary scientific literature within the bioaerosol field.
compose a scientific report, in which they critically evaluate and reflect on the results obtained by the laboratory and field experiments.

Credits

5 ECTS, University of Aarhus (no grades – only Pass or Fail.

Pre-course activities

There will be reading required in advance of the course and participants will be engaged in group discussions to prepare for the hand-on activities in the second part of the course. You should expect that this will take approximately one week of your time that will be rather flexibly spread between June and August.

Exam and assessment

Students write a scientific report based on the results of their project work.

Organised by:

Revised 10.01.2025

Anne Kirstine Mehlsen

Department of Biology