The Creative Mindset

Dear Editor,

The science fiction writer William Gibson once said, “When you want to know how things really work, study them when they are coming apart.” If there ever was a time when things were coming apart, life during COVID-19 would be it. Thankfully, we have great engineers, the people who want to know how things work. When things fall apart, engineers help put them back together, and sometimes make them even better. Engineers have a creative mindset. They learn how machines, materials, and technology work, and they can imagine making them into something else. That is why I think that engineers are so helpful during COVID.

One example of this creative mindset came from a group of professors led by Grace O’Connell from U.C. Berkeley, who wanted to help with the lack of ventilators. Their solution was to turn sleep apnea machines, which help you breathe when you are asleep and snoring, into ventilators that can be used to help patients with COVID. O’Connell and her team kept trying different ways to make the sleep apnea machine into a ventilator until they found a simple model that takes only a couple minutes to put together, has parts that are all FDA approved, and costs around $150.00. The creative mindset that these engineers have allows them to make ventilators that can save people's lives.

Another example of this creative mindset comes from the Indian Railways engineers, who turned train cars into isolation areas for COVID-19 patients when hospitals didn't have enough space. The engineers turned benches into beds and tables, added machines like ventilators and monitors, and curtains between cabins, and put up bamboo sheets to cover the walls roof to keep the temperature stable. This is another example of how engineers’ creative mindset can help during COVID.

My final example is from American PhD student Paige Balcom and Ugandan activist Peter Okwoko who recycled plastic and made it into face shields for the health care workers in Uganda who do not have them. Balcom and Okwoko made face shields by putting plastic into a shredder machine that they built, then putting those tiny pieces in a contraption that melts plastic, and then using a mold to shape it. One of the health care workers in Uganda even said, “I don’t even feel like taking it off!”

Living under COVID 19 has been a struggle for all of us, but engineers have it made it just a little bit better. One of the reasons that that is now possible is because of minorities and women. Throughout time women and minorities have not been able to have jobs like engineering, but that has changed. These examples show why diversity matters; the ventilator project is being led by a woman of color, the turning train car project is placed in India, and the plastic shield project is in Uganda. All of these people are from different communities. People from different backgrounds tend to have different ideas which makes the creative mindset deeper. Things have kind of been coming apart, but engineers from all different backgrounds help study them, and put them back together better than they ever were.

Sincerely,

A Concerned Citizen