The education benefits of air filters are still niche academic topics and have yet to be translated into effective communications campaigns for decision-makers in school systems. Many districts which purchased air purifiers during the pandemic have turned off devices, stuck them in storage, or thrown them out because they think of it as a relic of peak pandemic times when they were necessary to keep schools open. We'll combine popular writing and social media campaigns with direct outreach to education leaders across the country to convince them that clean air is one of the most cost-effective ways to improve education outcomes. Ultimately, they will see clean air as a foundational enabling condition for learning, much like school lunches.
Commercial air purifiers simply aren't designed for classrooms. They are too loud, underpowered for large spaces, and too costly for sustained district-wide adoption. Even during the pandemic teachers often wouldn't use them because they were too noisy or required manual operation. We will produce an air purifier optimized for the classroom – quiet, unobtrusive, and energy efficient – that teachers and schools forget are even there.
Thirteen states have passed legislation since 2020 promoting indoor air quality. Most focus on schools. We will build on policy momentum in these states to advance legislation that supports clean air in classrooms.
David Carel has spent the last decade building and scaling organizations that aim to solve some of the most pressing problems in health and education, uniquely combining proven education entrepreneurship with airborne disease expertise.
In 2012 he co-founded Panorama Education, a Y Combinator-backed data analytics startup that currently helps tens of thousands of public schools across all 50 states answer critical questions about student experience, school climate, parent engagement, and educator professional development. David then lived in South Africa for several years where he helped create and run Funda Wande, an organization that works closely with the South African government to design, evaluate, and scale up early grade literacy and math interventions. In 2023, he joined Blueprint Biosecurity, driven by the urgent need for new pandemic prevention solutions, a need he first recognized at 19 while studying tuberculosis infection control in South African hospitals.
David received Bachelor's degrees in Economics from Yale College and in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from the University of Oxford.
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