In the nascent days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Jiaxing Huang watched as the novel virus overwhelmed the hospitals in his native China. A professor of materials science and engineering at Northwestern University, he contacted colleagues back home to brainstorm how to apply their expertise to mitigate future pandemics and sent the subsequently published suggestions to the National Science Foundation.
The NSF had a similar idea, eventually putting out a call for rapid response non-medical research grant proposals to address the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. But not before awarding Huang. In mid-March, he became the first materials scientist to receive a $200,000 grant to develop a chemical add-on for traditional masks that can destroy COVID-19. Now Huang and his team have put their other research aside to concentrate on this new project.
“I was trying to motivate my peers and students that even though we don’t work on the…
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Source : fastcompany.com
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