Page 12 - ME Spring 2020 Newsletter

UMN ME vs CORONAVIRUS
ME faculty members are answering the call to help diagnose, treat, and prevent the spread of COVID-19.
UMN Respirator Mask Design Projects Led by ME Professors
The need for N95 masks has skyrocketed in response to COVID-19. To address this challenge, an interdisciplinary research team at the U has designed two respirator mask prototypes. The masks — one modified anesthesia mask and one single-use, disposable mask — are being developed to be close to a N95-equivalent with three distinctive components in mind: ventilation, fit, and resilience to supply chain fluctuations.
The research team tests mask prototypes
At the Center for Filtration Research (CFR), Professor David Pui and his team were able to test how well the masks would be able to reject virus-containing droplets. The Institute for Engineering in Medicine (IEM), directed by Professor John Bischof, also tested filtration material to see what alternatives could be implemented that come
The CFR’s PPE decontamination protocol
close to N95 mask standards.
Both projects showed that the efficiency of the tested material was nearly equivalent to that of filtration material typically found in N95 masks—potentially making the U
of M prototypes a viable alternative for health care professionals.
Professor Pui’s filtration research team also released crucial PPE decontamination protocol for healthcare workers.
How is COVID-19 Spread? The Answer Could Lie in Aerosols
Associate Professor Jiarong Hong is answering questions about how the virus is spread using his expertise in airflow and aerosols. Hong received a grant to study how aerosols spread through breathing and speaking in order to examine how the virus
might be transmitted via the air we breathe. He found
that just walking and breathing normally distributed
aerosol particles “all over the place.” The project
can’t determine whether or not the virus particles are
infectious, as it focuses only on the behavior of the particles themselves — but Hong’s work could inform how we implement social distancing.
12 ME News Summer 2020
A participant breathes into a testing device