BRAVE is developing intelligent air systems for the earliest learning environments — the childcare centers where immune systems are forming and where airborne exposures can set the course for a lifetime of respiratory health.
Led by Virginia Tech · ARPA-H BREATHE Program
Children in daycare spend hours each day in small, shared, often poorly ventilated spaces — breathing air that circulates continuously through rooms filled with allergens, mold spores, viruses, and bacteria.
The exposures children encounter in their earliest years directly shape their immune development. Poorly managed indoor air in childcare settings is linked to the onset of asthma and allergic rhinitis — chronic conditions that can persist for life.
More than 12 million American children under five are in childcare or preschool settings. BRAVE is building the infrastructure to protect them.
Asthma is the most common serious chronic illness in children — and indoor air quality is a primary driver of onset and exacerbation.
Research links early childhood exposure to allergens, molds, and airborne pathogens to allergic sensitization and the development of chronic respiratory disease.
Virginia Tech is developing a new biosensor that enables real-time, ultrasensitive detection of specific pathogens and allergens using nanobody-based technology — engineered to detect the targets that matter most in early childhood settings.
Software that translates data from the biosensor, building systems, community conditions, and environmental context into real-time respiratory risk assessments — specific to the population and the building.
Intervention tools that respond automatically to risk levels — adjusting ventilation, activating filtration, and lowering bioaerosol concentrations before children or staff are exposed.
Video coming soon
Virginia Tech's BRAVE team video will appear here.
BRAVE is demonstrating technology across multiple daycare centers, with deployment centered on Virginia Tech's home region and expanding.
Confirmed states shown in teal. Estimated expansion states shown with outline. Deployment map is updated as the program progresses.
Principal Investigator. Charles P. Lunsford Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech. One of the world's leading experts in airborne transmission of viruses and aerosol science.
Listen: Research Curious Conversations podcast with Dr. Marr ↗Oct 2025 · VT News announcement of the BRAVE award
Mar 2026 · Research Curious Conversations with PI Linsey Marr, Ph.D.
Official ARPA-H program overview for the BRAVE team
BRAVE is looking to partner with daycare centers, early education providers, and research collaborators across the United States.
daycares@breathe2026.org