09/12/2025
Industry + Academia: is collaboration the missing link in better indoor air quality?
Yesterday, Zehnder Group's Knowledge Consultant, Bart Cremers, spoke to Simon Jones on the Air Quality Matters podcast, a global channel that talks to leaders across the world to raise critical awareness of the importance of ventilation and indoor air quality - from housing to the workplace, education and healthcare.
They undertook an in-depth conversation about one of the biggest challenges in our sector: How can industry and academia work together more effectively to advance indoor air quality?
Bart sits at a rare intersection; bridging fundamental research, applied physics, renewable energy, data analysis and real-world product development. In the episode, he unpacks why progress on indoor air quality often moves slower than the science - and what it will take to close the gap between lab insights and lived experiences in people’s homes.
Some highlights include:
🔹The Two Silos: Why industry and academia often tackle the same challenges but from different angles – how we facilitate mechanisms that help both sides.
🔹 Real World Data vs. Lab Data: How field performance monitoring at scale can enrich academic research and validate models.
🔹 The Speed Problem: When research takes years to publish, technology evolves faster than the findings can keep up. But does innovation sometimes move too fast?
🔹 The Performance Gap: Why many studies measure poorly installed or outdated systems and what that means for understanding true ventilation potential.
🔹 Regulations & Reality: How designing to minimum compliance limits innovation across the whole sector.
🔹 Ventilation as a Service: A future where outcomes, not products, define success.
🔹 Retrofit & Citizen Science: Why the next breakthroughs will come from real homes, real people and real-world collaboration.
Overall, this conversation is about opportunity: Industry brings scale, data and practical insight. Academia brings rigour, curiosity and foundational knowledge. Together, they can transform how we deliver healthy indoor air.
We’re proud to have Bart representing Zehnder’s perspective on the importance of bridging these worlds and driving meaningful progress for healthier, better-performing buildings.
🎧 Listen to the full episode here: https://www.airqualitymatters.net/podcast/industry-meets-academia-with-bart-cremers