ESA- Project CLAIS
The European Space Agency ESA has commissioned a feasibility study for an innovative air purification system (CLAIS -Clean Air in Space) for space stations.
The contractor is a consortium of 3 partners (Bucher Solutions GmbH, Villinger GmbH and DPU), with DPU being the academic medical partner. The feasibility study will be conducted from March 2023 to September 2023, followed by the manufacturing of a prototype with extensive terrestrial testing if the feasibility study is successful, and then testing in space before the system can be deployed in a space station. The partner for these further phases of CLAIS development will be Airbus Defence & Space in Friedrichshafen, which has already developed and delivered ACLS (Advanced Closed Loop System), an advanced life support system for CO2 air purification and oxygen production for the International Space Station (ISS). The development of the CLAIS air purification system stems from the development successes in the H2020 Clean Air project in which DPU has already played a major role with medical expertise and extensive test series.
CLAIS is designed to significantly reduce viruses and bacteria in the cabin air of space stations, effectively eliminate mold spores, and neutralize bad odors. All these pathogenic particles and other air contaminants are inactivated in CLAIS, resulting in clean, healthy and fragrant cabin air. The background to this development is that in space, people always have to live and work together in a very confined space with limited air volume. A healthy person releases 25,000 to 40,000 germs per hour into the ambient air, depending on the activity, which contributes to a high germ load in the cabin air and greatly increases the risks of contamination and infection. Conventional air filtration systems currently used in space stations have significant disadvantages and problems that the use of CLAIS will avoid, since a cold plasma without generation of ozone is used for air purification instead of a filtration system.
Research Directors
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Juan AllegrettoI'm Juan Allegretto, originally from Argentina. I did my PhD focusing on the synthesis and characterization of Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs) films, in the Soft Matter Laboratory, under the supervision of Dr. Omar Azzaroni and Dr. MatÃas Rafti. I also worked as a postdoc for 6 months in the same lab, integrating MOFs into solid-state nanochannels for microfluidic membranes with highly specific separation and ionic transport. I'm currently employed by DPU as Junior Researcher, being the Project lead of the ESPRIT project "Tailoring Plasmonics & MOFs: Synergy for Odorant sensing" from FWF, on which I'm working under the mentoring of Dr. Jakub Dostalek in the Biosensor Technologies group.
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Naoto Asai Ph. DNaoto Asai is a full-time Junior Researcher at the LiST (International Laboratory for Life Sciences and Technology) research group at the Danube Private University. His research focuses on the development of optical biosensors for the detection of biomarkers. He joined this group to take part in a project entitled Digital Plasmon Biosensor (DIPLAB). His core research interest is to improve biosensing performance through cutting-edge technologies utilizing material science, biotechnology, and computer science. He received a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Kansai University, a master's degree in Engineering, and a doctor degree's in Engineering from the Graduate School of Kansai University.
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Dr. Hannes DörflerDr Hannes Dörfler is a chemist by training and received his PhD from the Molecular Systems Biology Department at the University of Vienna. After a three-year postdoctoral phase at the company Boehringer Ingelheim in Germany where he was working on Omics-based biomarkers, he joined DPU as a staff scientist. Hannes Dörfler has expertise in biochemistry and pharmaceutical development, and also works with multivariate statistical analysis of big data towards pattern recognition and biological interpretation.
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Dr. Jakub DostalekOptical biosensor technologie for biomarker analysis Jakub Dostalek received his PhD in 2006 from the Charles University in Prague and worked as a research assistant at the Institute of Photonics and Electronics, Czech Academy of Sciences (CAS) until 2006. After his postdoctoral training and spending one year as a project leader at Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz in 2008, he moved to the Austrian Institute of Technology in Vienna in 2009, where he worked from 2015 as senior scientist until 2023. Since 2020, he serves as a lecturer at the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences in Vienna. In 2021, he assumed senior researcher position at the Institute of Physics, CAS, in Prague. From 2023 he is active in LiST at Donau Private University. His research interests concern combined aspects of nanophotonics and biomaterials research applied in optical sensors and biosensors, and light management in thin film optical devices. Near-field and guided wave optics, plasmonics, biointerfaces, amplification strategies in optical spectroscopy, biomolecular interaction analysis. Analytical technologies for rapid and sensitive detection of chemical and biological species relevant to medical diagnostics.
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Katharina Schmidt Ph. DKatharina is an ambitious PhD student with the aim to develop plasmonic biosensors to observe well-seperated single molecules for ultrasensitiv cancer biomarker detection at the Danube Private University in the LiST Laboratory under the supervision of Dr. Jakub Dostalek. She achieved her individual Master's degree in Nanobioscience at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, as well as her Bachelor in Food- and Biotechnology.