2B Technologies Receives NIH Grant for GO3 Treks Educational Outreach Project

Boulder, CO , September 2, 2015 (Newswire.com) - 2B Technologies, Inc., a Boulder, CO firm, been awarded a Phase II Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) grant from the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).  The nearly $1 million grant will fund the development of new technologies for use in the GO3 Treks project over a period of two years.  In GO3 Treks students in schools around the US use pocket-sized instruments to measure air pollutants along “treks” of their own design.  Air pollutant measurements are uploaded to the web where they are displayed on Google Earth maps embedded within blogs where students, teachers and scientists discuss the results.

In the previously funded Phase 1 project, which demonstrated feasibility, approximately 4,000 students at more than 50 schools created and discussed more than 350 treks of ozone and black carbon in and near their communities.  The students learned about the sources, transformations and sinks of air pollutants by acting as citizen scientists, forming and testing their own hypotheses using real scientific instruments.  Highlights include comparisons of rural vs. urban exposures, comparisons of pollutant levels along busy and residential streets, a trek at a hydraulic fracturing site, treks from urban areas into the mountains and over large bodies of water, and investigation of emissions from different sources such as lawnmowers and buses.  One school explored an area that is known to have an underground coal mine fire and even launched the ozone monitor on a balloon to 30 km (100,000 ft) where ozone in the stratosphere was measured.

This grant will allow us to add other species, such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, and particulate matter (PM2.5), to the suite of air pollutants that can be measured using personal monitoring devices.

Dr. John Birks, President of 2B Technologies and Director of the GO3 Project

According to Dr. John Birks, President of 2B Technologies and Director of the GO3 Project, “This grant will allow us to add other species, such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, and particulate matter (PM2.5), to the suite of air pollutants that can be measured using personal monitoring devices.”  The pocket-sized instruments will communicate wirelessly with a smart phone so that treks can be displayed in real time and continuously uploaded to the web where they are shared with the general public. 

About 2B Technologies

2B Technologies (twobtech.com), located in Boulder, CO, invents, designs and manufactures portable instruments for air pollution measurements.  In 2009, 2B Tech launched the GO3 Project (go3project.com), an innovative outreach program for middle and high school students.  In addition to mobile measurements via GO3 Treks, the GO3 Project includes fixed-base stations at more than 100 schools around the world that continuously measure and upload air pollutant concentrations, including ozone, black carbon and carbon dioxide, along with meteorological parameters.  Students learn about air pollution and their health effects through online courses and participate in environmental contests within a social network.

This content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Contacts:

John Birks
President
P: 303-273-0559
E: [email protected]

Jessa Ellenburg
Director of Educational Outreach
P: 303-273-0559
E: [email protected]