UMD Research to Study Aerosol Transmission of Respiratory Viruses

A University of Maryland research project funded by a $650,000 grant from the Army Research Office will investigate the impact of environmental conditions on the spread and durability of airborne viruses.

The project, established in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, will be led by Taylor Woehl, associate professor in the department, and Akua Asa-Awuku, professor and associate dean of the A. James Clark School of Engineering. The goal is to identify how various environmental factors interact to determine the viability of aerosolized viruses in respiratory droplets.

“Soldiers operate in a broad range of climates, from arid deserts to rain forests,” said Woehl. “Understanding how climate affects transmission of aerosolized diseases and biowarfare agents will allow us to better protect them.”

Beyond defense applications, Woehl says that the COVID-19 pandemic underscored the need for more fundamental understanding of aerosol transmission of respiratory diseases among the general population, broadening the reach of the project to public health efforts.

Factors like humidity and droplet composition are well known to impact the survivability of aerosolized respiratory viruses. Respiratory droplets emitted during talking or coughing, as well as droplets emitted by aerosolization of biowarfare agents, contain a complex mixture of water, electrolytes, proteins, and viruses. These factors, along with environmental conditions can mediate how long and what fraction of viruses remain infectious and capable of transmitting disease.

While prior studies have established how several factors, including relative humidity, solute concentration, and surfaces impact aerosolized virus survival, currently there are no imaging methods to visualize how the interactions between these physicochemical processes occur inside aerosol droplets—impacting the vitality of the virus.

To address this knowledge gap, Woehl and Asa-Awuku’s research team will utilize humidity controlled in-situ electron microscopy, nanoscale chemical composition mapping, and 3D imaging to directly image these physicochemical processes occurring in bioaerosols.

“We can visualize in real time and with nearly molecular scale resolution what is happening inside a respiratory droplet while it dries into a bioaerosol,” said Woehl.

The approach will allow the researchers to directly test hypotheses for how virus viability is preserved in bioaerosols, to determine whether solutes like salt and protein can form protective shells around viruses in these droplets.

Their work will enhance understanding to inform decisions for setting the indoor environments of hospitals and barracks to minimize virus transmission, development of novel approaches to disinfect aerosolized respiratory viruses and biowarfare agents, models to describe respiratory disease by aerosol routes, and development of more accurate area of effect models for aerosolized biowarfare agents.

Published May 20, 2026