UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND
The University of Maryland’s Grand Challenges Grants program has given a Team Award to “The Air We Share, A Public Health Revolution for the 21st Century,” an interdisciplinary project on which Jelena Srebric is a co-principal investigator.
The project is led by Distinguished University Professor Donald Milton of the School of Public Health. It aims to advance the science of airborne infection transmission, demonstrate clean-air interventions in homes and healthcare settings, and build the research infrastructure and next-generation leadership needed to make safe indoor air a universal public health standard.
Team Awards receive $600,000 plus 50 percent matching support. Srebric’s fellow co-principal investigators include Kathleen McPhaul and Huang Lin of the School of Public Health, economists Maureen Cropper and Anna Alberini, and mathematician Abba Gumel. The second round of Grand Challenges grants, announced on June 25, 2026, represents a university investment of nearly $15 million over three years across 11 projects.
“The COVID-19 pandemic showed the world the importance of making sure that the air we share is as clean and free of infectious disease risk as the water we drink and food we eat,” Milton said.