Welcome to our Interactive Qualifying Project (IQP) on Pollen and Climate Change in Bucharest, Romania! Our team has four WPI students: Deanna Kay, Jessica Kelly, Tobias Schaeffer, and Tam Tuong.

 

Our collaborator is Dr. Poliana Leru of the Allergy Laboratory at Colentina Clinical Hospital in Bucharest. Dr. Leru recently started measuring pollen levels in Bucharest in 2014. Pollen was never previously studied in this region.

 

Our overall project goal is to better understand the pollen allergy problems that Romania faces, and determine relationships between factors that affects pollen allergies. These factors include pollen counts, allergies, climate change and lifestyle choices. To accomplish this goal we are developing a user-interface data analysis tool that determines the relationships between factors by calculating correlation coefficients and creating regression models. Lifestyle information is limited, so we are developing a survey to collect data on Romanian lifestyle practices. We are also devising methods that can be used to help raise awareness about pollen allergies in Bucharest by creating an educational pamphlet to be distributed at the hospital and creating a Facebook page to increase web presence.

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This strategy should help Dr. Leru and Colentina Clinical Hospital gather support for further research on this topic, and establish a research center for respiratory allergies to link Romania to the National Aerobiology Network in Europe.