#71 - Asit Kumar Mishra: Data, People, and Buildings: The Life of a Built Environment Researcher

What drives someone to spend two decades studying the air we breathe indoors? In this conversation, I sit down with Asit Kumar Mishra, a research fellow at University College Cork, to explore the fascinating world behind the research that shapes our built environments.

Asit takes us on a journey from his early days as a mechanical engineering student in India to becoming an internationally recognized researcher in building ventilation, thermal comfort, and indoor air quality. Rather than focusing solely on research outcomes, this conversation delves into the process itself – the challenges, motivations, and profound satisfaction that comes from answering questions that directly impact people's health and wellbeing.

"Most of the days, probably 60-80% of the days will not end up as you expected," Asit reveals, highlighting the persistence required in scientific inquiry. Yet it's the human connection that keeps him coming back – whether explaining to worried parents how to protect vulnerable family members during a pandemic or discovering through conversations with schoolchildren that unexplained sensor readings were caused by dancing in the classroom.

The discussion shifts between practical research methods and philosophical reflections on knowledge communication. Asit, who describes himself as naturally introverted, finds unexpected joy in public engagement: "If I cannot explain it to an eight-year-old, then maybe I don't understand it well enough myself." This commitment to clarity resonates throughout his work, especially in his current project, developing classroom designs that can adapt to public health challenges without requiring school closures.

For anyone curious about how research shapes the spaces we inhabit, this episode offers rare insights into both the scientific process and the passionate individuals driving it forward. Tune in to gain a deeper appreciation for the intersection of engineering, public health, and the built environment that affects us all every day.

Asit Kumar Mishra LinkedIn

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Built Environment Research
• 9:14 Asit's Journey From Mechanical Engineering
• 20:09 The Life and Process of Research
• 39:34 Field Research and Data Collection
• 58:32 The Importance of Public Engagement
• 1:07:55 Current Work: Dorothy Co-Funding Scheme
• 1:16:34 Podcast Closing

Transcript

Simon: 0:00

Welcome back to Air Quality Matters. We already have the tools and knowledge we need to make a difference to the quality of the air we breathe in our built environment. The conversations we have and how we share what we know is the key to our success. I'm Simon Jones and coming up a conversation with Asit Kumar Mishra, research Fellow in UCC, that's, university College Cork. Asit is an experienced researcher who I've known for a while as a researcher in the built environment, looking into subjects right at the heart of ventilation and air quality, currently working in public health and air quality in schools in Ireland. You can imagine we often have a lot to talk about, but it occurred to me I've never really had anyone on the podcast to talk about research itself, not necessarily the output, but the role, how they find themselves doing this work, what drives them, gives them job satisfaction and so on. It seems to me at least, to be a real vocational role, something you were drawn into. So it was that I sat down to talk with Asit about. He has worked all over the world with big names in big institutions, to everything in between. It was a really fascinating insight into Asit's world, how he got here and what drives him Recorded on location in the Great Hall in UCC. I really hope you enjoy this one. Please don't forget to check out the sponsors in the show notes and at airqualitymattersnet.

Simon: 1:49

This is a conversation with Asit Kumar Mishra. I think we'll naturally talk about the work you're doing, but I thought the nice angle today was about researching, about the life of a researcher, the process of researching some insight for somebody that's done it internationally over many years in different environments, looking at different topics, all within the built environment. So, you know, pertinent to the, to the, the audience of the podcast. But I just thought that would be a really nice approach to try and work through it, because we're always talking about the outcomes of the research. We very rarely talk about the process of the research itself. You know, and you kind of get glimpses of it when you're talking to people mid-research but invariably the output is a paper or some further research or something we don't often talk about, the job of researching itself. How long have you been researching or researcher? Quote unquote now do you reckon?

Asit: 2:58

Including my master's, I would guess close to 20 years. Now, 20 years yeah.

Simon: 3:04

Yeah, and outside of the textbook definition of what a researcher is, how would you describe it? Like if someone was thinking, like if you were talking to a teenager thinking about the kind of careers that they were looking at, what would you? How would you describe research to them in general, jaden that's a difficult question, it's.

Asit: 3:30

It's something that you kind of start to do out of inertia at a certain point, because you enjoy it's a certain topic, because you enjoy going deeper into that topic, and then the rest of it sometimes like at least in my experience it kind of organically works out that, yeah, you wanted to figure out something about this, and then you got a bit deeper and then you say I see that, okay, there is this kind of challenge there or this kind of problem that a certain user is facing. So how do I address that? And you're continuing on that path because you are interested in it, you're inquisitive about it, and at the end, at some point, you come out with some findings which might be relevant to a user or some relevant to other colleagues that are working on a similar field, and so that's essentially kind of research so you kind of fall into it.

Simon: 4:23

It's one of these things. Very few people set out to be a researcher as such.

Asit: 4:30

They're generally studying within a certain discipline In my case it would have been engineering. So I did my undergraduate in engineering and because at that point of time already I knew that I liked to be in this domain like science, maths, from your school days and then you figure out, ok, engineering is a nice place to be, it has applied aspects to it and specifically in India, the engineering colleges. They generally give you a pretty good exposure to the different possibilities that you might have. Like I have friends from engineering days who are in administrative services, who are business like, they set up their own business, who are writers, they have their own TV show and quite successful with it. So you have a very different kind of mix of people. It's a nice exposure to come in contact with all this different kinds of friends, colleagues, classmates over that time. So that's one of the reasons why I chose engineering.

Asit: 5:35

And then, like, okay, engineering is technical, so as a mechanical engineer by training, and then you start focusing on specific aspects. Like during my undergraduate I was focusing on, kind of by choice and by kind of an inclination, an attraction on aspects related to thermodynamics and heat and mass transfer. So those things. When you go up a bit then that leads to things like ventilation, air conditioning, refrigeration, so this aspect and then those things as you go to a PhD. That translates towards buildings. So that's kind of a circuitous journey of how you end up researching about buildings from being a mechanical engineer engineer, so so most, would it be fair to say most researchers first exposure to research proper is during phd, do you think?

Asit: 6:34

no, I think for a few that it might have also been during their school life and for most it would be during the like, third or fourth years of their undergraduation. Okay, so by that time you, because there will be kind of a topic that you might be working on for your graduation project, so you get some idea like do you like researching on that? It's not supposed to be something dramatic or add something dramatic to the existing literature, but it's just something like it could be something that someone else has done, but I'm trying to recreate it as part of my, like, graduation project yeah but that gives you an idea that uh, is this something I will could feel good about doing, and but in more detailed or and more innovative situations working on something more innovative than just replicating someone else's work.

Simon: 7:31

Yeah, that's really interesting. You say that and I guess at that point in education it's the first chance you've really had at a bigger scale to apply the knowledge you've been learning all the way through school and college. And now you're towards the end of college, you're starting to take on a project and starting to even if you're trying to replicate something that's been done before you're going through the process of research and the application of science or engineering or whatever it is you're doing and do you think the success or failure of that first exposure to the application of the knowledge is very important on whether somebody can see a path in research? I can imagine if your first exposure to practical application of the knowledge you've been learning in college is a disaster, or your teacher is poor or you get given a topic that you're not comfortable with or you don't enjoy. I imagine that colours your view of the application of knowledge.

Asit: 8:32

Yeah, I think that's a fair point and, as you mentioned, one of the more important factors would be the teacher or your supervisor. So it could be that whatever you are doing doesn't work out. But if you had someone maybe a mentor, maybe your supervisor, maybe friends or even seniors, who kind of gave you the idea that it's not supposed to work out every time, it's okay if it doesn't work out, as long as you were able to kind of go through the steps, you're sure of what you have done, and maybe you get a negative result 's okay.

Simon: 9:08

A negative result is sometimes also welcome to science. Yeah, exactly yeah. In fact, that's probably a good setup for most of the rest of your career is getting used to abject failure of thinking you know what's going on and then realizing you don't.

Asit: 9:24

Yeah, it's like I've been thinking about word question, like we discussed earlier that we'll be talking about the process of research. So that is the thing that okay here also. That is that parato 80 20 principle 80 percent of your time will be spent on getting 20 percent of the work done, and if you can survive that, then you can use the other 20% to do the rest of the work.

Asit: 9:49

Most of the days probably 60 to 80% of the days will not end up as you expected them to go, will not have the results that you expected. At those points it's good to have that kind of passion or that interest in something that you're doing, so then you can go through it, to go past it to the 20 of the days when things actually work out brilliantly yeah, and in those early days when you were you were coming out of college, you were starting to look at things like phds.

Simon: 10:22

How important were the people that were around you in signposting the art of the possible were you? Were you exposed to other researchers, professors, people in internationally, in different fields, conferences, those kind of things where you went? This is a world I, like you, know I can see myself here.

Asit: 10:46

In my case, I guess it was slightly different. So after my undergraduate I did my master's in the US, but that was kind of just before the 2008 crash. So at that point I tried to have a job in the US for a year or so, but the market wasn't very good. I came back to India and when in India I started teaching in a local university and that's where I realized that I like being in this academic environment teaching students. There I had a colleague who was working on something quite different, so he was working on biofuels for diesel engines. So we did a couple of works together so I thought, okay, if I'm going to stay in this environment, I need a PhD. So let's get a PhD.

Asit: 11:35

So I came back to the university where I did my undergraduate from and during that time it was really nice to have my PhD supervisor, professor Ram Gopal. So he gave me a lot of freedom as to what I could work on, like the topic I worked on. He didn't have any other students working on that topic. I mean it was related to air conditioning and ventilation, which he has knowledge on, but he didn't have any other existing projects in that discipline. But because I wanted to explore that area. He gave me a lot of freedom and guidance on like, especially letting me know that, okay, don't proceed down this rabbit hole, yeah. So that was a good uh pairing or good combination to have and so.

Asit: 12:22

So that's where I guess this thing started off, like trying to like. Initially the idea was probably to do some building energy simulations, but I got diverted into the idea of like, how are buildings being designed? Like, what are the relevant standards for thermal comfort, like what says that this air conditioning has to be at 23 or 26 or heating has to be at 21 or 20? So that's where I came into okay, what are the relevant standards for a naturally ventilated classroom in india, which isn't much explored or like, and is it something that will follow the pattern for, let's say, or the standards for air-conditioned classroom in Texas, or would it be something different? So that's where I went into this idea of looking into people and buildings together Instead of just a systems aspect of ventilation and air conditioning. Ventilation, air conditioning.

Simon: 13:27

That's where I got involved with occupants and occupant needs, occupant comfort, health and performance, etc and what do you think at that time stopped you from just teaching and pursuing a teaching career in university? Was it this, that was this within your dna, that you just had questions that you wanted to answer that you're, that's the way you does. That is that how it works for a lot of researchers, that they find themselves in academia in some form or other, whether in the phd environment, maybe doing some part-time teaching while they're doing it, and so on. And and do you kind of have to make a choice at some point that my focus is going to be research and I might do some teaching, or my focus is teaching and I might do a bit of side research? Or, you know, do you find people tend to go one way or the other at some?

Asit: 14:22

point. In most I think most of the larger universities, it's difficult to have a clear distinction. You will have commitments both ways. Yeah, I mean teaching, or at least student supervision, and as well as research and living about the administrative stuff. So it's difficult to have a clear distinction amongst people in the university system. Sometimes you might have, like the technical universities, sometimes you might have a more clearer distinction between what people are doing, if they're focusing on teaching or kind of training or they're focusing on research. But it's more difficult to have a clear distinction like that.

Simon: 15:23

And do you do any teaching today? Is that still part of you almost entirely focused on research?

Asit: 15:29

it's mostly, almost completely research, because right now I'm the school, in the school of public health as an engineer, so there isn't really a subject I could teach to the students there. There are some student supervision commitments still, but they aren't really teaching in the classical sense, and what did you do your PhD in in the end?

Simon: 15:52

What was the topic?

Asit: 15:54

The title, if I remember vaguely, was Thermal Comfort of Naturally Ventilated Classrooms in the Hot, humid Climate Regions of India. Okay, interesting.

Simon: 16:05

And a subject that's still being discussed today, that one, I'd imagine, yeah, yeah. And when you'd finished your PhD, then was it a case of connections you'd made and research that you'd done led you off in certain directions, or were you sitting there after your phd looking at posts online, thinking where could I work? I mean, how did you? How did you go from that kind of, I guess, fairly common line for education to a phd, doing some research, doing some teaching, to being the, the journeyman that you've been since, working all over the world researching all sorts of topics in the built environment?

Asit: 16:52

How did you get from there to here so when it was kind of drawing close to thesis submission and defense, I was already starting to look around for positions and specifically at that point of time the idea was to have a postdoctoral experience, because that helps to broaden your perspective and work in a different environment than you did your PhD in. So I worked with different people, developed more connections as well. So at that point I was looking around and I got in touch with Marcel Lomans in Deccan University of Eindhoven and there were commonalities in the kind of work that I had done for my PhD and so I had applied for that position and that got through.

Simon: 17:50

So that's how I ended up in Eindhoven and then I've been around a few places since then yeah, we were discussing before the podcast a few days ago and then you'd mentioned, I think, dtu at some point as well. I think, wasn't it?

Asit: 18:07

Yes, so the order would be Antwerpen, aalto University, singapore, back to Galway. Then, as part of my current work, I'm a guest researcher. I was a guest researcher, oh no, I am. Technically I am, but I was in DTU in 2023 and 2024. And then I'm back now to UCC.

Simon: 18:32

And what's a guest researcher?

Asit: 18:34

So a guest researcher is essentially someone the university is not paying for. Okay, but he has. He can use the facilities like, he has access to the library, the lab and he has a place to sit and work. Yes, Because the program works like this and I guess a lot of Marie Curie co-founders also work similarly that you have an outgoing phase, but your host university would be like in my case it was UCC, so throughout my contract, UCC handles all the administrative stuff, and for DTU, it was just that I was going to be working there with Powell and Roshli, and so their commitment was that they would provide me a space and let me have access to any facilities that I might need.

Simon: 19:29

Oh, brilliant. Okay, that's interesting. But principally, you're, you're employed by the the host university yeah. Um, and you've been, you say you've been doing this for nearly 20 years now, you reckon.

Asit: 19:42

I included my master's degree yeah, yeah but uh, I guess. So this my phd was uh defense was in august 2015, so just about 10 years now.

Simon: 19:57

10 years, yeah I mean that's a well. These days that's a long time in any discipline, do you? What's what? What's the motivation for you personally in research there? There must be something in in this that you get out of it from a personal satisfaction perspective, because we'll come on to the process, but it's I imagine it's a grind at times trying to do the work. So sticking anything out for a decade or more means something's motivational in it. What do you think it is about research, or perhaps the discipline that you're looking into, that keeps you coming back for more?

Asit: 20:38

I guess in my case, it was good to have a topic which is so closely related to people and there is often a very clear and direct impact of what we do on life of people, or how a building might be designed or how people might be operating their own homes. So that's what keeps me interested in this and so helps me get through those 80 percent of the days. So knowing that there can be uh, there can be quite that it uh impacts of what we find in this. I guess uh, there was also an added uh inspiration during the pandemic, which is kind of an odd thing, but at that point of time, as you know, a lot of people were interested in air cleaning, ventilation, and so I was active on social media those days and I have kind of dealt with people, even one to one, as to someone had an infection in their home and they wanted to ask about how should I run a fan or may open windows to minimize the chances of others getting infected?

Asit: 21:53

Or someone had a elderly person in their home and they wanted to check what should I do so that, because I have to work, how should I make sure that I lower the chances of me infecting my, or how should I make sure that I lower the chances of me infecting my parent or grandparent? So these are the kind of situations where you can very directly provide some of your knowledge from the findings that you know, some of the findings that seem pretty simple and trivial until that point, but the kind of use it comes for to people, like the level at which it's useful to people and the things that people can be grateful for, that's also an inspiration yeah, and and I guess the risk in research is a disconnect from outcomes or benefits or value that you're providing and and within your discipline of of kind of buildings, energy saving, indoor air quality, that kind of thing.

Simon: 22:53

It is tightly connected to people's perception and outcomes and experience of the built environment. So there is that person connection. I can imagine research if you're buried away in the back room looking at something that's very disconnected from reality not reality but the real world that slog then must be very lonely or could get lonely potentially.

Asit: 23:20

I guess they would have different motivators or different kinds of inspirations for them and at the same time, maybe I'm fortunate that I work in a discipline where it is easy to stay motivated and easy to connect with the results of what we do.

Simon: 23:40

And how have you found the built environment community in general of researchers and engineers and business? Has it been quite a welcoming place to work in? Have you found it easy to connect with people and network and reach out?

Asit: 23:56

Yeah, in general it's a pretty humble and welcoming community. A pretty humble and welcoming community, so it's easy to. It's not very hierarchical, see, it's much more horizontal and there are people at different levels of experience who would be happy to listen to you, happy to welcome you, happy to give their two cents on your ideas. So, overall, it's a good, good experience. It's a good bunch of people to work with and and based on my discussions with colleagues who are in other disciplines, I know that it is not always so in every discipline, so it's not something well, they're welcome to life.

Simon: 24:42

You know you can. You can just get unlucky, can't you? There's what do they say? There's assholes everywhere, you know, and you just never know when you're going to meet one Overarching all of this. I mean, like we said, you've been in kind of energy saving and air quality and thermal comfort. Yeah, are there some big questions in that field that you feel compelled to look at and answer, or is it generally in the research and the stuff that you've found yourself involved in? Has it been much more specific than that, or are you kind of you know? Is it driven by you know, for example, sustainability and energy savings? Is it driven by trying to answer health outcomes, or or do you just do you find interest in the in the detail? Is it something comes across your desk, or an idea, or a collaboration idea with a group of people that you go? Yeah, that that's what gets me going. Or is it something bigger than that? That's that that kind of motivates you to then?

Asit: 25:52

at some level. I guess it's both so, uh. So when I did my phd, the focus was that uh, how do I look at a standard that would facilitate? Uh, energy sustainable classrooms?

Asit: 26:07

During my first postdoc and I've been working with marcel Jan Hansen, so Jan Hansen is a pretty big name in buildings energy simulation so at that point of time it became clear that, okay, buildings are there primarily for occupants. Now we don't want a building to be splurging energy or wasting energy, but at the same time, if it is necessary to keep my occupants comfortable and safe, I'll use that bit of energy. The building's responsibility is not to generate clean energy or not to be like the poster boy for energy conservation. As long as it's keeping the occupants comfortable and safe, it's probably contributing more, because sick people are a big energy intensive. Like it's a big drain on energy, as we say. Like one of the most energy intensive things we do is falling sick. So it involves a lot of resources. So if it can't keep your documents comfortable and healthy and productive, that's then it's doing plenty.

Asit: 27:11

So that's the overarching goal that I have had, instead of focusing just on a sustainable building. Like I could make an excellent sustainable building which is just a half of a spear no openings, but that's not going to keep my people healthy or happy. And then there are certain opportunities that come up for collaboration, as you mentioned. So which kind of texture I am? Currently I am working as part of the Dorothya Coffin scheme, and the idea of the Coffin scheme was to have interdisciplinary research to address challenges of public health of the future. So one thing that I have found interesting in working with people from public health here at UCC is there are certain frameworks in public health which can be easily translated to studying indoor climate or studying even building energy usage, so which would make our research much more applicable and it could make our results more robust, and at the same time, we don't have to reinvent the wheel. That is already something existing.

Simon: 28:31

So that's a nice kind of combination uh, cross-disciplinary, uh cooperation which is always attractive as well yeah, it's interesting you say that about that multi-disciplinary aspect, that that's the same in research as well, that there's there's different lenses, that things are looked through from different disciplines. That's very difficult to comprehend unless you're having discussions with those people. It was one of the most informative times for me actually was during the COVID period, working with public health people starting to look at air quality through the risk lens, where you didn't have all the answers, and that you found certain parts of the the environment were able to react very differently in a space where we didn't have answers because they were used to working in that environment. Risk is a very different space to work in than absolutes and thresholds and and those kind of things. So that's fascinating that you say that as well.

Simon: 29:38

Um, how, how over the years? How? How have you found yourself doing certain research? So has it been that there's already a question being asked as part of a cohort or group and you're invited or apply to answer that question? Or sometimes have you thought of things that need answering and develop that research from scratch? Like, how's it generally work for researchers out in, out in the world? Are they, are they? Are they given research to do generally, or are you developing that research almost completely from scratch yourself?

Asit: 30:24

it would be a combination of both and also it depends on what level are you at. So during PhD you could have some initial input from your supervisor or colleagues or other professors in the group and then you are supposed to build upon that to create something of your own, like during postdocs or as a researcher. So it could be or and it often is that there is already a funded project which has certain specific goals and because your research interests intersected with those goals, so you have been hired for that and then you are supposed to focus on addressing those specific goals. Now you might have your own creative ways of how you decide to go from point A to point B or how you're able to answer those research questions that were important for the project. So there's that kind of independence there. But at the same time there might be a framework that, yeah, there are certain deliverables that need to be achieved uh, like as you grow in that. At my level it's a combination of like. So there could be specific projects I'm working on with collaborators where that is a defined research question which maybe we came up together as a group or maybe they already had something going on and they have invited me in because there is a challenge that they faced where they know I have an expertise, or it could be my own project, like the one that I'm working on currently, so which we developed from scratch. This is something that needs attention trying up public health and classroom designs or classroom interclimate. So that's something then you work on on your own. It could be something very small, like the project that we had in Denmark. It was because I was going to be there for 18 months, so it was supposed to be a small project where we had to.

Asit: 32:33

The idea was that, yeah, probably whenever we go to classrooms, the research is kind of becoming like helicopter research. Like we go in, we put in some sensors. We said that, yeah, this is going to monitor this, this, this, and then we take the data and go back. Sometimes there is also some feedback from the children, but in the process, like, what do the schools or the children or the teachers gain? Yeah, we can say that this will probably contribute to better standards for classroom design in the future, but what about those students in the classes that you visited?

Asit: 33:05

So we decided that, okay, let's make it more interactive, we'll just talk to the students, and the teachers were also interested in the sense that they don't just come to talk about your research. Talk to them also about what you do as a researcher and how do you become a researcher, so that's kind of inspiring them towards STEM-related activities. And then you can also introduce what you're doing, why you're doing it. So then you did that, made some're doing how, why you are doing it. So then you did that, made some measurements, went back with the measurements to the children and so showed them that this is how your temperature in your classroom varies, or how the co2 in your classroom varies, and then got some feedback from them as to what they thought, why it might have varied this way. Or like maybe the sun was ending or maybe we left the classroom, so that's why it has fallen.

Asit: 33:51

Or one day the PM levels were high, whereas the outdoor PM levels were low. Why is that? That was the single day in the entire two week monitoring period, while the PM levels are high. And that's because, apparently, they were dancing in the classroom. Their children were dancing in the classroom and we would never have realized that the PM levels were high because of that. We would have probably thought that there is something wrong with the sensor. Yeah, if we didn't talk to the children. Yeah, yeah, and so that's. That's how it panned out. I mean, it's probably not going to lead into any publications. That wasn't the goal. It was just to have this kind of more cooperative approach to studying indoor climate in classrooms, so that they don't feel that they're not part of the process.

Simon: 34:32

Yeah, I guess there's always a balance. There isn't there, and I've had this conversation with Henry Burridge talking about the SAMI project in the UK where the challenges of citizen science and how much you get people involved in it, because sometimes your research is observational, you don't want them to react to the process that's going on Right, and other times, ethically, you may be obliged to let them know that certain environments aren't healthy and so on. So there's all these complex considerations and that reminds me that that's a good point. The kind of stuff that you're talking about. There is kind of field research as well, and field research can be very different to lab research or theoretical research or whatever. Is that something you found yourself doing? Quite a bit of the the field work research, and is that why you get this good connection with people and their environments? Is that fair to say that a lot of your work has always been based on out there?

Asit: 35:37

as opposed to in here. Correct so, but of course there it depends on certain situations, like where I am working. How much can I go out in the field, like if I I'm doing my work? When I was in Netherlands, that is a language barrier, like I can't always go into the field and expect to be understood.

Asit: 35:58

So, there are certain limitations, like that, which will be there. But yeah, I have done a fair bit of field research through my PhD and postdoc studies as well. It has its own challenges. Things don't always work out in the field as you expect them, it's not as controlled as in a lab environment, and but yeah, there is also the connection with the end users there.

Simon: 36:25

So yeah, especially when you're dealing with things like kids and you see them come alive with the science that they you know. You see them develop an interest in something like that's an amazing thing to see. I think everybody gets a buzz when you see people engage with the science of what you're doing. I take it research, like many things in life, isn't an endless pot of money, so you're often having to make compromises and direct resources in certain directions and so on. Is that something that comes with experience of research that instinctively at this stage you know what's going to be a dead end or what's going to be a pull on resources or how to efficiently get to what you need to get to you? You were joking at the beginning about the 80 20 rule that you're gonna. Even when you know what you're doing with this time, you still spend 80 every time doing 20 of the work, like that's unavoidable.

Asit: 37:27

I take it yeah, uh sometimes, yes, like you have an idea of uh, how to this, like budget your money or budget your uh resources? Uh, sometimes you may not know, those aren't the nicer or more pleasant times, but typically what we try to do is try to have a good starting basis, and this is something that I kind of learned in my stint during Singapore, working with Stefano Scavone. He's in CB UC Berkeley, so we would always start off with based on his advice. Stefano Scavone is in CB UC Berkeley, so we would always start up with, like, based on his advice that we start up with, like, what do we really want? Okay, what is the like?

Asit: 38:19

If you want the moon and the stars, let's start off at that point and then we can make adjustment based on practicalities, based on what's necessary, what's not, and then finally arrive at something that is both feasible and would also answer the questions that we have in mind. It could be that very simple example. Let's say there is a field research and you had to choose between temperature and humidity, but most sensors with the same price will give you both, and if you have both data, it could be useful later for you or maybe someone else who is working on something similar, so measure both. But whereas if you wanted to have something more like, let's say, black carbon or ozone, those are costlier alternatives. So there has to be a really good reason as to why I want that, and if I have that good reason, I might as well spend the money to get it, because otherwise I'm not answering my basic question. So it has to be like you start with assuming you have all the resources and then narrow down to what you really need to answer your questions.

Simon: 39:29

Yeah, yeah, now I know what you mean. I'll have you back to the podcast in just a minute, but I wanted to tell you briefly about Imbiote, a partner of the podcast. I came across Imbiote a while ago and in fact completely unrelated to the podcast had been trying out some of their sensors here in my office, which I still have here today, and with customers. I was seriously impressed then and remain so. Imbiote are a multi-disciplinary team with a common goal to promote healthy and sustainable interior spaces. They manufacture smart indoor air quality monitors and an exceptional cloud platform.

Simon: 40:10

I get to see and use many products, as you could imagine, and Imbia stands out here the quality of the product, the innovation they bring with sensors and connectivity options, and a platform with some unique approaches to reporting and integration with many of the reference standards in the sector, like Reset, well, lead and others. Their devices can also be integrated to any building to control and automate the operation of HEVAC systems, ensuring optimal air quality and energy savings. Details are in the show notes, as always, and at air quality mattersnet and at imbiot. That's I n b I o t dot e s.

Simon: 40:59

Now back to the podcast. It's probably an impossible question to answer, but can you walk me through what a typical research project looks like for a researcher, like, what's the life cycle of a research? And and in your field, in this built environment field, where you're looking at air quality and thermal comfort and so on has it typically had a duration as well? So, like have you found that typical research you've been involved in as being a two or three year project and it has this kind of a pattern, or is it just just too varied?

Asit: 41:41

I guess. Uh, I can start with the end of your question. So, yeah there isn't a typical uh life cycle for a project, so it really depends on what kind of project it is, and so, like I was involved in a project which was retrofitting a zero energy building to a plus energy building, that I mean including my involvement of around two and a half years that thing was probably six years and that's not typical, but that yeah happen, because it's a big project, there are a lot of levels of approvals to get and and finalize, so that could happen.

Asit: 42:20

But at the same time it could be something which is simple enough and gets completed within eight months. So typically, when you would start off with or rather, let me put it this way so we have this overarching goal of looking at healthy, sustainable buildings, and so within that we would have some ideas, some ideas we are passionate about, like the one I was talking about, like, so, classroom studies, but with engagement of the children. So that is some idea that had in the back of my head and just a few paragraphs of it. So maybe you write it down. So that's a good idea.

Asit: 42:59

That's something jan taught me, that. So whenever you have an idea, you make a note of it and have kind of a sort analysis of it. Like have it there ready so that the next time some funding opportunity comes up, so the next funding opportunity comes up, you say that, okay, this idea fits with this opportunity and I could get so much and such and such things done with this funds that would be available. So then you start kind of expanding on the brief idea that you had, and it's always a nice thing to have a attractive acronym at this point yeah, so it's something that sticks yeah and so, and then you which is rare.

Simon: 43:43

I found in in research people coming up with names that people don't go. Really you couldn't think of something better.

Asit: 43:55

The curse of research is people coming up with poor acronyms, and so then you expand that a bit, try to align your idea with what the funding body or funding organisation wants and hope that it gets through and that's a good point you raise there.

Simon: 44:13

Actually, and I suppose none of this happens without money, and, like the, the first, the starting line is can I get somebody to pay for this idea, isn't it? And so whether that, whether you're fitting that idea within a frame of available research funding that comes up from time to time and from certain bodies, or a particular university is looking at a particular area, or has a school that's looking at a particular area, but that's that's point a, isn't? It is like, yes, I've got an idea, but ideas are only ideas until somebody's prepared to put some money behind this, and that that will frame what you can do, I guess as well, the available funding, I mean, I guess it's uh, it's a good thing, as we discussed previously, that this area of research is quite uh kind of in contact with the end users yeah so, generally, the ideas that we would have has a relevant end goal or a relevant end point with.

Asit: 45:11

These are the users who would be affected, or these are the users who want a solution to this problem and this is what it would be. We would be providing them with. Yeah, so that helps in a lot of the situations of obtaining the funding, because we can convince that, yeah, this isn't something that we just dreamt up of, this is a real situation. There's a problem that exists and this something that we just dreamt up of, this is a real situation. There's a problem that exists and this is how we intend to address it. And once you have the funding, then it's of course. It goes down to getting the required approvals, then planning out when you're going to do what.

Asit: 45:47

If you need to buy stuff, buy them, deploy them, get some data. If you need to buy stuff, buy them, deploy them, get some data. If you want to ask questions, ask the questions. But, like, you have to treat all of this as instruments and study design has to be quite rigorously done, otherwise you will end up wasting your time and you will end up wasting the time of the participants or the stakeholders, which is worse, your time you want to waste, fine. But if you disappoint, like let's say it's a classroom, the stakeholders would be the school, the teachers, even the student kids. It's really lonesome to disappoint them or waste their time because next time you want them they won't be there for you.

Simon: 46:34

That's a really good point, and Sarah West made that point really well in the podcast. She's a citizen science specialist and she makes the point that there's got to be something in participation for people. People will only participate so many times if there's nothing in return and if you make that experience bad for them, then they're much. You're much less likely to be able to go back to that well to do further research and that's something we haven't touched on is that often these ideas come out of stuff that you were doing previously. So nearly always at the end of this stuff you're going we didn't quite answer that. I, we need to, you know. So these things are often don't just happen in isolation. They happen as a result of years of something not quite answering something. Yeah, and if you like, you say if you need to involve office workers or school children or whatever you owe it to them, that it's well thought through and has an impact.

Asit: 47:36

Um, otherwise you can't encourage people to participate, I mean it could be something it doesn't always have to be something physical or monetary that they gain from the experience. It could just be that you are paying attention to what they're saying, you are taking them seriously and you're not dismissing them outright. So even that experience that, yes, we are being heard, our voices, are important to this field, to this research. That also helps. It's just to create a conducive environment, create a kind of a safe environment where they can express themselves, where they feel that their experience, their perception is important and they're not just there just to complete this and somehow tick some boxes.

Simon: 48:22

And, as Sarah said, you know it's very difficult sometimes to anticipate what people are going to get out of it. You know she had a body of research I can't remember it was looking at mushrooms or butterflies or something that where they were getting, um, participation from people, um, and the thing that most of them reflected on was that it got them out of the house and forced them to go for walks and they enjoyed being with nature. So the benefits they got from that citizen science wasn't what the citizen science thought they were going to get out of it at the beginning. But if you're engaging properly, what you don't want is poor rigour, meaning you don't get outcomes out of it. You want something at the end of it, and I guess at the end of all of this you're trying to answer questions. Invariably you have to write this up. So if you've not done it properly, it's going to be critically reviewed anyway, particularly it's peer-reviewed. So you you're under pressure to have something that's I'll tell you something funny.

Asit: 49:26

so, apart from the peer review part, or apart from getting it published, if you haven't properly done it, you will find it difficult writing down yourself because you would have forgotten what you did, starting from the application of the grant to the end. Even in a small project it could be a year, and if you do not have this kind of steps of how you did it and what you did when you write the final report it gets, it can get quite tiresome yeah, what's your um?

Simon: 49:56

what's your favorite bit of research? What's your favorite part of research? Where do you find yourself? In the purple patch, where you're loving it and this is why you did it compared to the bits where you're, friday evening at 10 o'clock going, this is a shit job. Why did I ever do this? This is, you know, what's the bit that, what's the bits you really enjoy? Where are you on fire in research?

Asit: 50:21

It's kind of counterintuitive for me because I'm in. I am in most of my normal life, I'm introverted, I'm actually on the spectrum, so I don't really like a lot of human interaction. But the only time I do it and I love it is when I'm talking about this kind of things like public engagement. So that's one thing that attracts me. The other thing is looking at data. It's kind of an odd thing to say, but it's sometimes like even data that has been gathered as part of other projects. So it's especially with the kind of computational tools that we have available today and the kind of experience that I've gained through working with people from different disciplines like psychologists, public health specialists, engineers, architects. So sometimes that gives me that kind of multiple perspectives to look at the data, which can be quite fascinating. So I don't know if I should say so.

Asit: 51:27

This is something that's under preparation right now, but commonly the idea was that thermal comfort is normally the modeling is kind of a linear thing.

Asit: 51:39

So when you're moving from, let's say, cool to slightly cool, it's the same response that would be required from slightly cool to neutral. That's how the typical model has been thought of, especially for field research. So recently we're looking at field research data, but from the idea that why should that be true? It's more likely that at the extremes there will be probably smaller changes in temperature needed to change the perception. So let's look at it that way, and specifically, we're looking at the differences between school classrooms versus university classrooms because of the age difference, and so then you see certain differences that school students, they respond in a slightly different manner. They respond in a slightly different manner, especially at the extremes, which means that we need to be more considerate, or we need to look at it more carefully when we're designing a school classroom as opposed to a university classroom. Because they are the age is different, there are more opportunities to adapt to their environment and they can be more assertive, like, if they're not comfortable, they'll probably leave the class. That's not true for a school child.

Simon: 52:54

So so those are like it's the looking at the data, but from a human perspective interesting yeah, and I was only talking to a lady yesterday who has come alive in social housing predominantly because she started looking at data, and she's been fascinating to watch her journey and discovering how housing works through the eyes of data, with the, with the experience of having to manage those tenants as well, and it's been really interesting to see how the excitement she has around data. Um, for you, is it the? I'm probably using the wrong terminology, but is it the hard data you like? The sensor data, the numbers? Do you like the softer data, the questionnaires, the cognitive performance studies? Is it a combination of it all? Is it just the beauty of trying to stitch it all together and see patterns, and is it that? Is it that the bit that you enjoy, that that kind of collecting stuff from the built environment and trying to see what's going on? Right?

Asit: 54:14

in some way. I think it's a combination of both and uh. So one thing I would always advise anyone who's starting on this uh field is that have clear objectives of what you want with the data. Okay, whenever you have a massive amount of data and this does, it is very easy to get a massive amount of data. It's very easy to go down rabbit holes and see oh, this is a correlation that I see, yeah, yeah causation versus correlation.

Simon: 54:44

And yeah, you put enough data together. There'll be patterns in everything.

Asit: 54:48

Yeah, even if, like uh, leaving aside the causation and correlation part, it's just that if you get distracted, there is a lot in the data that can distract you from the original questions that you started to try to answer and it's a waste of time, like it could be a very interesting idea, it could be a very interesting correlation, but leave it aside for someone else to explore, or maybe you can explore it, but after we have done what you've done your job, yes so. Otherwise, it's very easy to get distracted by large data.

Simon: 55:24

I get the sense you're speaking from personal experience that you've. Four hours later, on a Wednesday evening, you're going. What am I doing? Like no, hang on a minute.

Asit: 55:33

That's you know. So that's something you start up doing. During my PhD I've done that a lot of times, but that's kind of what you learn with experience, as, yeah, I have this experiment, this is my experiment design and I hope I hopefully have collected enough data to answer my questions and then have a look at the data that okay, again, that will tell you that do you have enough data to answer the questions that you started out to answer? And then you can think of what kind of models to use to look at correlations and whatnot. So it's important to think of who you are doing it for, like the occupants, what age group they are, what is their background, which climate are they acclimatized to and what are their situations like. How much control do they have of their environment.

Asit: 56:26

Then look at the kind of instruments that you have used, like have you major temperatures, humidity, co2 levels, gore and window openings and, at the same time, the instrumentation, like surveys, like what kind of service should I use?

Asit: 56:39

Should I use the same survey for elderly people as opposed to for children, and how can I make my surveys more interesting for children so that we get consistent responses from them? So you have to think of these things, then look at the data and then you think of, okay, this is what I have and these are the questions that I need to answer. So maybe I will use this model or this kind of correlation to get to my answer, like, before you even looking at the data or before even considering who your end users are, if you fix it on a model or if you fix it on a process, that yeah, I'm going to a correlation, I'm going to then do a linear regression and then I'm going to have a model. So that kind of it may not work always for this kind of this field, where it's very much involved with occupants, it's not just buildings, it's not just inanimate HVAC systems.

Simon: 57:54

It's a combination of the built environment, the systems and the people somebody maybe not as that comfortable communicator talking um that you actually enjoy that part of it? Unpack that for me a little bit. Is it a sense of achievement in communicating results? Is it that invariably you're connecting with other people in the field when you're talking about what you're doing in research and so on? Um, because communicating in science is one of the things is why I exist, doing the podcast, but it's one of the things we don't do very well. You know we're very poor at getting this knowledge that we're learning out there in ways that's meaningful for people. Um, what do you think it is that you enjoy in the the communicating your work piece?

Asit: 58:46

all right. So this like? I once heard a TED talk where the person speaking was he. I related to him because he said that I love giving a lecture, but then after that I need 30 minutes of alone time to recover okay so that's I related to that. So I do need that alone time to recover, because this isn't normal or natural for me. But what I enjoy particularly about it is trying to put the knowledge basis that we have in as simple a form to communicate as possible.

Simon: 59:19

Yeah.

Asit: 59:19

So I mean, I strongly believe that. I mean, this is engineering, this isn't some okay, it's not, what relativistic mechanics that I can't explain to an eight-year-old. No, so I should be able to do that. If I am not able to do that, then maybe I do not understand it well enough myself, or I haven't thought of good enough representation, good enough analogy or good enough form to communicate it.

Simon: 59:45

yeah, so that's the challenge which I have to overcome, and once I feel that I have it in a form which can make it easy to communicate, uh, then I'm happy about it and I want to show it off that, okay, this is yeah, but, but I think I think that's so true in general there's something very cathartic about being able to express the complex in terms that everybody can understand, because I think you have to go through a process yourself of understanding something deeply enough to be able to express it in a way that's understandable, because you can always tell when people don't fully understand the subject, they struggle to simplify it, they struggle to it was fenomen, wasn't it? I think about that, you know? Um, I think it's a. It is a generally a very cathartic thing to be able to do and a process you have to think about if you're going to do properly right, and we see people do it poorly. You know there's plenty of academics that can't bring it down and communicate it at a level where you inspire or you generate ideas, because we do that through storytelling and through simplicity and plain english. We're never going to do that with a big equation on a board.

Simon: 1:01:01

You know, showing off, showing off. You know nobody, although I did notice, actually, I was at a conference there the other day and somebody put up one of those ridiculous equations on the screen that only people that don't want people to know what they're doing put up on a PowerPoint presentation and I uploaded it into ai and said could you explain this for me? Simply, it looked at the picture, understood the equation and presented it to me in plain english in a way that I understood, and I was like that was the first time I've ever done that in anger. Now I knew it was possible, but it's the first time I've actually been in a conference where you know we all do it, don't we?

Simon: 1:01:43

We see a slide come up and you take a photo of it, and what I would have done in the past if I'd remembered post the conference which I very rarely did was I'd send it to somebody that I knew knew about it and asked could they explain it to me? But you'd have to wait for them, not to be busy, to be able to do it, whereas this was done in 30 seconds. It was a photo and it explained it perfectly, and I showed it to the person that put it up on the slide and I said is that right? And he went wow, yeah, that's amazing. So like times are changing, I think things like that.

Asit: 1:02:21

Also further evidence that a lot of things that we might think are complicated are not. Yes, okay, yeah, I mean there are. Of course, there's a bunch of complex mathematical equations behind why opening a window works. Sure, but those aren't really a concern of a person who's going to open a window or who's going to decide if I should or shouldn't open the window.

Asit: 1:02:41

Yeah, a person who's going to open a window or who's going to decide if I should or shouldn't open the window? Right, yeah, so you can tell them. The idea is to convey to them like, when should they open the window? Or how do you tell them that opening the window might not work in a certain situation? Talk in simple terms, like if there is a wind, if there is a temperature difference, like if it is warmer outside, then you are more likely to gain more benefit from opening the window. Or uh yes, this is even complex equations would have simple interpretations that if the ai can tell you, then you should be able to do that for your audience as well yeah, no, absolutely yeah, no, no.

Simon: 1:03:17

I just really liked your explanation of that and also, I think a lot of people can also appreciate the go and finding a quiet room for 20 minutes after you've been in front of a load of people talking, because it's not a comfortable thing, I think, for most people.

Simon: 1:03:31

To be fair, um, tell me a little bit about the work you're doing at the moment, then.

Simon: 1:03:37

I mean, we've spoken a lot about the process of research and I thank you for that actually, because, as I said to you at the beginning of the podcast, very often in these conversations we're talking about the subject itself and very rarely, I think, if we pause to think about the process of researching and why people would do it and what they get value out of it. Um, I actually suppose, before we jump on, just to finish that conversation off, is this a job you'd recommend to people? Or do you think people have to find a passion and be pulled to it because it's just so torturous that you've got to have a passion for the subject matter to bear it? Or you would actually say to somebody at the age of 15 researching is the career you want, like is it is the job of researching a job that you generally recommend to people I wouldn't recommend unless you are passionate about a certain topic and it could be any topic and you can enjoy working on that, and so you.

Asit: 1:04:40

It doesn't have to be engineering, it could be art, sciences, literature, whatever fascinates you. I guess that's true for a lot of jobs that you're passionate about what you want to do and then like, if you have a real passion for what's behind the research, then you would enjoy the process as well, because that process is helping you get deeper into something that you love or like yeah otherwise it, as you said, it can be quite torturous yeah, for sure.

Simon: 1:05:12

I suppose that's true. Most vocational type careers is that people find themselves doing it because they're pulled to answering or so in service of something.

Asit: 1:05:22

They can't help it we had a kind of funny theory, like we're discussing I was discussing this with pavel that people who work on indoor air quality, they are typically also people who are sensitive to indoor environments and they might have this. You know, more sensitive to smells, yeah, so, and people who are more sensitive to lighting except they're water and lighting yeah you wonder.

Simon: 1:05:52

You wonder that, or whether it's chicken and egg. Are you sensitive because you know, or do you? Are you encouraged to know because you're?

Asit: 1:05:58

sensitive. Yes, I know that I was sensitive before because so this is. I think I was in grade 10, so that would be like the second year before leaving certical. Yeah, so we were in a kind of a computer classroom and it was air conditioned so air conditioned but with split ac, so no ventilation and I suddenly started feeling quite feverish and then when I went outside, it got fine. I thought maybe because it was due to nervousness or whatever.

Asit: 1:06:28

But later, like when you come into this field and you discover that, okay, that was sick building syndrome, so I am amongst it, but something like five to ten percent people who suffer from sick building syndrome. And quite recently, like in 2020, we were doing a study related to co2 impact of co2 and as opposed to impact of poor ventilation. So I knew that on the days when ventilation was low, on that day, I would start to feel like it was a two and a half hours study and I was there with the people. So by the by the end of the days when the ventilation was low, I would be feeling feverish, I'd be having a headache and once it is over, so I step out, stand outside for 15 minutes, I'm all good.

Simon: 1:07:15

Yeah, it's funny when you look back, isn't it? With the knowledge that you have. Yeah, obviously, this stuff seems so obvious to you now, yeah, what are you working on now? You mentioned that you're doing work with public health. Yeah, yeah, what's the purpose of the research?

Asit: 1:07:30

at the moment it was in 2022.

Asit: 1:07:35

So Research Ireland, I think then it was Irish Research whatever, irish research whatever, since, yes, hrb, epa and research island they came together to, along with msca.

Asit: 1:07:48

So they had this idea to start a funding scheme and it was called dorothy co-founding scheme. The idea was to have cross-disciplinary research to look at or on handling the challenges related to public health in the future. I guess it was inspired by pandemic and during pandemic, a lot of different disciplines had to come together to face off the challenges. So the idea was that let's get started on preparation rather than just being responsive. So there we made a case that public health is impacted by your indoor environment, specifically from our experience, indoor climate-related thermal comfort and air quality. And so let's look at what can we do for, specifically for classrooms in terms of the design, so that we can be better prepared the next time there is a challenge to the indoor climate of our classroom, so that, like, if we are faced with a challenge like a pandemic or, let's say, a forest wildfire, the quick solution should not be that we shut down schools.

Simon: 1:09:08

The longer-term investment or the goal should be that we have classrooms which can deal with these challenges towards things like they did with ASHRAE 241, like these kind of responsive preparing to be responsive to events. So you know certain modes that a school might have a normal mode and then have a pandemic mode or whatever it is. So you're looking at that kind of a thing?

Asit: 1:09:38

yeah, so it could be related to to. Once we started looking at it. So it was apparent that, yes, you can have certain engineering measures, like you can have a pandemic mode, or you can have a forest fire mode, or you can even have a heat wave mode for a classroom and at the same time, to support these engineering interventions, you would need some kind of guidance related to management and policy in place, like a classroom sorry, a school could have someone who is responsible for these aspects, like, let's say, periodically monitoring the air quality in a classroom or making sure that whatever are these instruments let's say air filters or sensors or UV lights that are to be used in an emergency event they are in proper order. And then there's also awareness amongst students and teachers as to what's important about air quality in classrooms or what affects those aspects.

Simon: 1:10:44

So is there a goal to have a certain output from this, then, or is it just a general research into the area? Is it like a grand literature review, in a way, or are you actually trying to answer a specific question or have a particular outcome?

Asit: 1:11:00

The outcome that we want to have would be kind of a matrix of solutions that we recommend that, okay, these are, let's say, policy related measures that need to be implemented. These are like everyday managing the building related measures. These are certain active measures that you might have. These are certain passive measures that you might have during design phase or during operational phase and then, based on your situation, based on what's available to you, based on your resources, you can choose something that's appropriate for your case. So there is, as part of this fellowship, there is also a secondment to the department of education where hopefully, we get to know more about what goes into design guidelines for classrooms and how it could be improved or how we can make some changes to that based on what we have found and, at the same time, what are the current goals in terms, because they are also impacted by the climate plans and climate goals of ireland. So it has to be a synchronization between the energy related goals and health related goals, otherwise neither one is going to work yeah, interesting, and is it?

Simon: 1:12:17

how multi-disciplinary is this particular research? You've got public health people in there, kind of epa type people as well. You've got yourself engineering and environmental science in there. Are there others there?

Asit: 1:12:31

are other disciplines in in the research that you're doing primarily so we have people from public health, from ucc, people from the side of engineering that is, me and power from dto, and then you have uh, on the policy and implementation side, the department of education's their planning and building unit. So these are the three major pillars of this interesting, and is it just island focus?

Simon: 1:12:56

this particular reason because you said pavel was involved in it, though. So pavel's you. You brought in to look at the irish context.

Asit: 1:13:02

Okay, interesting, I mean we hope that whatever we come up with, it would have more wider applicability, because yeah, of course there are other similar climates to ireland which should have similar requirements, but at the same time, because this is primarily a irish funded project, so our focus will be on classrooms here, classroom design guidelines. So the department of education of ireland, so yeah, yeah.

Simon: 1:13:31

And and how far into the research are you now? How far into this process is this? Is this your?

Asit: 1:13:37

full-time job at the moment.

Simon: 1:13:39

This, this particular body of research, how far into it are you? About one year left. One year left, okay? Oh yeah, because you said it was running from about 2022. I think that's when the… 2023 to 2026.

Asit: 1:13:52

Yeah, okay.

Simon: 1:13:54

Okay, so finishes in 2026. Okay.

Asit: 1:13:57

I mean. So they have part of the same program. They have had at least two cohorts of researchers, so there will be people who are recruited later and they'll be finishing later as well. It's a three-year program and so I was part of the first cohort and so for me it would be May 2026.

Simon: 1:14:15

Yeah, and it will culminate in a report to the government and EPA, or the body that pulled this together, or will it culminate in academic literature? What will the outcome of this research be? Do you hope there will?

Asit: 1:14:33

be. I mean, we had actually three things in mind. One would be academic literature, so we are some way into that. The other thing would be, along with Department of Education, if we can have some kind of policy briefs related to design or even operation of classrooms. So that's something that remains to be seen, like how well we can contribute to their ongoing process. And the other was related to communication to the general public.

Asit: 1:15:07

So we're also, I would like to think, that we are, pretty much in a decent place, because so, uh, during this period it allowed me to work on pieces for the rte brainstorm, pieces for conversation, which just delve into basics of indoor air quality. And also, typically, we start up with set up the situation, set up the problem and end up with a few guidances, a few simple-to-follow ideas, simple-to-follow rules that can help you improve your air quality or improve your thermal comfort. So, yeah, just today I was thinking that, okay, it's rainy right now, but last week was unusually warm, next weeks are also going to be unusually warm and this summer, probably, like the past years, is also going to be the warmest year on record.

Asit: 1:16:03

So one of the pieces that I did for Brainstorm was related to how to stay safe during a summer Like even if the temperature is not going to go beyond 30, but that's unusual for Irish weather and there is enough for the children or the elderly to suffer from heat stroke. So what are the simple preventive measures that you can take at home or at offices to stay safe? So I should probably post it yeah, interesting.

Simon: 1:16:30

Um, was there anything else particularly you thought might be useful to discuss today? That's it. We talked. We talked about, uh, healthy buildings, buildings in India on the short video, so I don't think there's any need to go there.

Simon: 1:16:48

Look, for me, I think it's been a really fascinating insight into the work of a researcher, how you'd find yourself in this space, some of the kind of work that you find yourself doing and the kind of person you'd want to be to do it. Um, so I can't thank you enough for your time. I think it's been really interesting. It's been certainly very insightful for me and, like I say, I spend a lot of my time talking to researchers but never really stop to ask them about researching as such. So that's been absolutely fascinating to talk to you about. That's it. Thanks a million. I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much, no problem, thanks for listening.

Simon: 1:17:29

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