Engineers from Across the Globe Create Solutions for Covid-19

In March of 2020, the world changed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 is a highly contagious disease that shut down many schools, offices and kept people in their homes in the United States and across the globe. Many people have gotten very sick and sadly many people have died. Until a vaccine comes out, we will be stuck with COVID-19 and will have to learn ways to live with it. We have to wear masks and rely on different safety measures. Thankfully we have engineers that want to make a difference and are trying to solve some of the problems that come with COVID-19. I am going to share a few stories that I found fascinating. They feature various types of engineers that are rising to the challenge of stopping some of the COVID-19 problems.

First, I would like to tell you what civil and environmental engineers at UC Berkeley in California are doing to help identify COVID-19. These women and men figured out that if you sample wastewater you can figure out where COVID-19 is spreading. From studying wastewater, you can tell if a person has COVID-19 before they even get symptoms. The UC Berkeley lab has the capacity to bring in lots of samples which is helpful when it comes to making decisions about COVID-19. Before COVID-19 hit, this team’s job was to make sure water was safe to drink. When COVID-19 arrived, they changed to testing water for the virus. I think that it is really neat how engineers can quickly change to work on new problems.

Next, I will take you to the country of Uganda for a story about mechanical and manufacturing engineers who are recycling plastic to create face shields. Paige Balcom and Peter Okwoko realized that the hospitals in the Gulu region did not have personal protective equipment like face shields so they created a process to make them from recycled plastic. It is so important for doctors to have safety equipment so they can treat patients without getting themselves sick. This is an amazing idea because they are taking trash off the street and recycling it to make face shields. Before the pandemic, these engineers were helping local people make roofing tiles out of recycled materials but then they changed to help with COVID-19.

Lastly, I would like to share a story about Philips Respironics and the engineering response team they created. Philips Respironics is a company that makes ventilators which help people breathe while sick with COVID-19. The team consisted of system design, electrical, and manufacturing engineers. The team took a positive airway machine and turned it into an emergency use ventilator that could be easily produced in large quantities. This story is important because engineers came together from all over to join this response team.

I hope you have learned that all types of engineers from across the globe came together to create solutions for COVID-19. These people gave up their current work and changed because they care deeply about others. These stories show that engineers like a good challenge. When engineers see a problem, they want to come up with ways to solve it. These stories show that student engineers and experienced engineers both pitched in to help. I am in middle school, but I hope that one day I can become an engineer and use my problem-solving skills to help the world.

Annotated Bibliography:

Manke, K. (2020) UC Berkley Launches Pop-Up Lab to Monitor Bay Area Sewage for Covid-19. Berkley News. Retrieved from: https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/10/29/uc-berkeley-launches-pop-up-lab-to- monitor-bay-area-sewage-for-covid-19/
The author explains how engineers have developed a way to test wastewater for Covid-19 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The engineers realized that testing wastewater is another way to see how Covid-19 is spreading and warn of potential outbreaks.

Guitierrez, N. (2020) Rapidly Engineering Ventilators for The Covid 19 Pandemic. MIT NEWS. Retrieved from: https://news.mit.edu/2020/erwin-franz-rapidly-engineering-ventilators-covid-19-0601
The author informs us about the Philips Respironics engineering response team that designed a ventilator based on an existing Bipap machine for emergency use during the pandemic.

Okot, J. (2020) Ugandans Melt Plastic Waste into Coronavirus Face Shields. Thomson Reuters Foundation. Retrieved from: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-uganda- environment/ugandans-melt-plastic-waste-into-coronavirus-face-shields-idUSKBN23I035
The author explains how engineers Paige Balcom and Peter Okwoko created a way to recycle plastic trash into medical grade face shields helping to solve a hospital shortage.