Yale University is developing the first Healthy Building Microbiome Index — a data-driven score that links the microbial community living in your home to the respiratory health of the people living there.
Led by Yale University · ARPA-H Resilient Systems Office
About PRO-MICROBE
PRO-MICROBE is a companion program to BREATHE, managed by ARPA-H's Resilient Systems Office. Where BREATHE focuses on institutional buildings, PRO-MICROBE explores a different question: what does the microbial life inside homes do to the health of the people who live there?
Every home — its dust, air, and surfaces — is inhabited by a complex community of bacteria, fungi, viruses, and other microorganisms. This community is different in every building, shaped by its occupants, its construction, its ventilation, and its environment.
Research suggests that early childhood microbial exposure strengthens immune systems, and that greater microbial diversity in homes is associated with reduced asthma risk. But we have never had the tools to define what a healthy home microbiome actually looks like — or to measure the distance between a given home's microbiome and that ideal.
PRO-MICROBE is building those tools.
— Jordan Peccia, Thomas E. Golden, Jr. Professor of Chemical & Environmental Engineering, Yale University. On the microbes we've never characterized for their beneficial effects.
Emerging evidence links richer indoor microbial communities with reduced risk of childhood allergic sensitization and asthma development — a biological signal PRO-MICROBE is designed to quantify.
Yale's team is sampling the dust, water, and air of 400 homes in Southern Connecticut — split between households with healthy occupants and households experiencing respiratory health problems — and performing lung function testing on participants.
Classical statistical models, machine learning, and deep learning methods are being applied to train, test, and validate an adaptable index that correlates microbial features with building conditions, environmental factors, and health outcomes.
The result: the first data-driven score that links a home's microbial ecology — what's living in its air and dust — to the respiratory health of the people inside. A tool to guide building design, operations, and health interventions.
400-home study in Southern Connecticut. Yale University, New Haven, CT.
Thomas E. Golden, Jr. Professor of Chemical & Environmental Engineering, Yale University. Leading the study design, microbial sampling, and index development.
Yale Engineering magazine profile of the PRO-MICROBE research program and its science
Original ARPA-H PRO-MICROBE launch announcement
Official ARPA-H program overview for PRO-MICROBE
PRO-MICROBE is building the scientific foundation for understanding healthy building microbiomes. Researchers, building scientists, and public health professionals — we'd like to hear from you.
research@breathe2026.org