Clarkson University Dean of the Wallace H. Coulter School of Engineering Goodarz Ahmadi recently gave the keynote lecture at the National Research and Safety Institute in Nancy, France.

The "Chemical Risk: Innovative Methods and Techniques" conference welcomed representatives from government, industry and academia from around the world to share information on how to protect against chemical hazards.

Ahmadi, distinguished professor and Robert H. Hill professor of mechanical engineering, delivered a talk that focused on how particles move around in indoor and outdoor air, as well as in human noses and lungs.

Ahmadi said understanding how particles behave is important for protecting people against everything from pollution and dust to germs and chemical attacks.

"If you want to build a device to protect people, you need to know how these pollutants disperse in air and how people breathe them in," he said.

Ahmadi said he uses CT scans of human noses and lungs to build a computer model to see how air flows when people breathe and evaluates how particles of different sizes deposit in the airway passages. He said computer simulations enable researchers to conduct tests they wouldn't be able to perform on people.

"You cannot really test chemical risks on humans, but on a computer model you can actually do it virtually," he said. "This provides an alternative way of studying the process."

The conference was organized by the Institut National de Recherche et de Sécurité (INRS) in association with the Partnership for European Research in Occupational Safety and Health (PEROSH).