Assoc. Prof Suman Majumdar
Biography:
Associate Professor Suman Majumdar is Chief Health Officer at the Burnet Institute. An infectious diseases physician, public health practitioner and researcher who has led tuberculosis programs in PNG and the Asia-Pacific and served as Victorian Deputy Chief Health Officer during the COVID-19 response (2021–23), he works in partnership with communities, organisations and governments, integrating care delivery, public health and research. He leads a pandemic preparedness program on airborne pathogen prevention and two major translational projects on indoor air: the Pathway to Clean Indoor Air project, developing scalable community-based air quality interventions, and ELUCIDAR, a large cluster-randomised trial of germicidal ultraviolet (GUV) light to reduce respiratory infections in aged care.
Abstract:
Effective technologies to improve indoor air quality (IAQ) exist yet remain underutilised in existing buildings never designed for infection control, and retrofitting clean-air interventions into occupied, ageing building stock raises distinct feasibility and acceptability challenges. The Pathway to Clean Indoor Air (PCIA) project, is a 12-month mixed-methods implementation study across education, office and community settings in Victoria. Indoor air quality improvement models combine environmental sensors (PM2.5, CO2), retrofitted ventilation and filtration solutions, real-time dashboards, and stakeholder engagement. We report interim acceptability and feasibility of delivering clean air in existing buildings, and implications for meeting proposed IAQ performance targets. These findings inform how clean air can be delivered in existing healthcare and community settings as a passive, building-level control against airborne pathogen transmission — extending the infection prevention toolkit beyond source and personal measures into the shared environment.