Imagine a reusable face mask that protects wearers and those around them from SARS-CoV-2, is comfortable enough to wear all day, and stays in place without frequent adjustment. Based on decades of experience with filtration and textile materials, Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have designed a new mask intended to do just that — and are providing the plans so individuals and manufacturers can make it.

The modular Georgia Tech mask combines a barrier filtration material with a stretchable fabric to hold it in place. Prototypes made for testing use hook and eye fasteners on the back of the head to keep the masks on, and include a pocket for an optional filter to increase protection. After 20 washings, the prototypes have not shrunk or lost their shape.

“If we want to reopen the economy and ask people to go back to work, we need a mask that is both comfortable and effective,” said Sundaresan Jayaraman, the Kolon Professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Materials Science and Engineering. “We have taken a science-based approach to designing a better mask, and we are very passionate about getting this out so people can use it to help protect themselves and others from harm.”

The fundamental flaw in existing reusable cloth masks is that they — unlike N95 respirators, which are fitted for individual users — leak air around the edges, bypassing their filtration mechanism. That potentially allows virus particles, both large droplets and smaller aerosols, to enter the air breathed in by users, and allows particles from infected persons to exit the mask. 

The leakage problem shows up in complaints about eyeglasses fogging up as exhaled breath leaks around the nose, making people less likely to wear them. The fit problem can also be seen in constant adjustments made by wearers, who could potentially contaminate themselves whenever they touch the masks after touching other surfaces.

To address the leakage challenge, Jayaraman and principal research scientist Sungmee Park created a two-part mask that fastens behind the head like many N95 respirators. The front part — the barrier component — contains the filtration material and is contoured to fit tightly while allowing space ahead of the nose and mouth to avoid breathing restrictions and permit unrestricted speech. Made from the kind of moisture-wicking material used in athletic clothing, it includes a pocket into which a filter can be inserted to increase the filtration efficiency and thereby increase protection. The washable fabric filter is made of a blend of Spandex and polyester. 

The second part of the mask is fashioned from stretchable material. The stretchable part, which has holes for the ears to help position the mask, holds the front portion in place and fastens with conventional hook and eyelet hardware, a mechanism that has been used in clothing for centuries.

“We want people to be able to get the mask in the right place every time,” Jayaraman said. “If you don’t position it correctly and easily, you are going to have to keep fiddling with it. We see that all the time on television with people adjusting their masks and letting them drop below their noses.”

Beyond controlling air leakage, designing a better mask involves a tradeoff between filtration effectiveness and how well users can breathe. If a mask makes breathing too difficult, users will simply not use it, reducing compliance with masking requirements.

Many existing mask designs attempt to increase filtration effectiveness by boosting the number of layers, but that may not be as helpful as it might seem, Park said. “We tested 16 layers of handkerchief material, and as we increased the layers, we measured increased breathing resistance,” she said. “While the breathing resistance went up, the filtration did not improve as much as we would have expected.”

“Good filtration efficiency is not enough by itself,” said Jayaraman. “The combination of fit, filtration efficiency, and staying in the right place make for a good mask.”

The stretchable part of the mask is made from knitted fabric — a Spandex/Lyocell blend — to allow for stretching around the head and under the chin. The researchers used a woven elastic band sewn with pleats to cover the top of the nose. 

The researchers made their mask prototypes from synthetic materials instead of cotton. Though cotton is a natural material, it absorbs moisture and holds it on the face, reducing breathability, and potentially creating a “petri dish” for the growth of microbes. 

“Masks have become an essential accessory in our wardrobe and add a social dimension to how we feel about wearing them,” Park said. So, the materials chosen for the mask come in a variety of colors and designs. “Integrating form and function is key to having a mask that protects individuals while making them look good and feel less self-conscious,” Jayaraman said. 

The work of Jayaraman and Park didn’t begin with the Covid-19 pandemic. They received funding 10 years ago from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study face masks during the avian influenza outbreak. Since then Jayaraman has been part of several National Academy of Medicine initiatives to develop recommendations for improved respiratory protection.

Covid-19 dramatically increased the importance of using face masks because of the role played by asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic exposure from persons who don’t know they are infected, Jayaraman said. While the proportion of aerosol contributions to transmission is still under study, they likely increase the importance of formfitting masks that don’t leak.

Jayaraman and Park have published their recommendations in The Journal of The Textile Institute, and will make the specifications and patterns for their mask available to individuals and manufacturers. The necessary materials can be obtained from retail fabric stores, and the instructions describe how to measure for customizing the masks. 

“There is so much misinformation about what face masks can do and cannot do,” Jayaraman said. “Being scientists and engineers, we want to put out information backed by science that can help our community reduce the harm from SARS-CoV-2.”

Link to plans, patterns and specifications for this mask

CITATION: Sungmee Park and Sundaresan Jayaraman, “From containment to harm reduction from SARS-CoV-2: a fabric mask for enhanced effectiveness, comfort, and compliance.” (The Journal of The Textile Institute, 2020) https://doi.org/10.1080/00405000.2020.1805971 

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Media Relations Contact: John Toon (404-894-6986) (jtoon@gatech.edu).

Writer: John Toon

Personal initiatives by a pediatrician and by researchers to make face shields for medical workers have transformed into an industry collaboration that by June had delivered 1.8 million shields to hospitals and other organizations around the country with plans to produce 2.5 million all total. A $2 million donation from Aflac Incorporated for personal protective equipment (PPE) financed the bulk of the shields.

To make it happen, a team of researchers and industry partners convened at the Global Center for Medical Innovation (GCMI), a Georgia Tech-affiliated nonprofit that guides new experimental medical solutions to market. The group combined the physician’s vision with the researchers’ original designs, adjusted them to pass FDA emergency guidelines, and then coordinated mass production and distribution.

A physician’s wisdom

The project grew wings in mid-March, after Dr. Joanna Newton became concerned that the nationwide shortage of PPE was leaving healthcare workers across the country vulnerable. Newton is a physician specializing in improving healthcare safety through technology at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, and she was already collaborating with Georgia Tech on other projects.

She grabbed the phone to leverage the connection.

“I called Sherry Farrugia to tell her about my idea to 3D-print PPE. We needed to quickly find a solution for the PPE shortage around the country, and I knew we had the right team here in Atlanta to help,” said Newton, a pediatric hematologist/oncologist at the Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorders Center of Children’s.

“The situation was urgent, and I knew who would have the right expertise to get this done,” said Farrugia, chief operating officer and strategy officer of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Pediatric Technology Center, which is part of Georgia Tech.

Farrugia had Newton present her idea at GCMI to researchers, advisors, and industry partners who immediately put together a team to address the need for face shields to protect healthcare workers from droplets containing the coronavirus. She also discussed the need with Devesh Ranjan, associate chair of the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, who suggested connecting the effort to a parallel initiative in that school.

Bringing in engineers

At the same time, along with Ranjan, Sam Graham, chair of the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, and Susan Margulies, chair of the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, were coordinating efforts across campus to develop various medical devices in response to the pandemic. Graham, Margulies, and Ranjan quickly connected GCMI with Christopher Saldana and Saad Bhamla, faculty members in Georgia Tech’s College of Engineering, who were leading an simultaneous effort to address the face shield problem with their students using rapid fabrication techniques like 3-D printing, laser cutting, and waterjet cutting.

“The Georgia Tech mechanical engineering team used rapid fabrication equipment and quickly produced multiple face shield designs that could be manufactured in high volumes for the rapid response environment that Covid-19 required,” Saldana said.

Making a few thousand shields in a lab had likely already saved lives, but the Georgia Tech researchers and GCMI put their designs on the internet, where they have been downloaded thousands of times by organizations manufacturing them around the world. And the manufacturing partners they engaged have been turning out hundreds of thousands of shields to save many more lives.

“You may need 45 minutes for a headband with a 3D printer, but manufacturers turn out six of them every 19 seconds. Then making a million face shields becomes a real possibility,” said Mike Fisher, who leads product development at GCMI.

GCMI opened a GoFundMe page, which brought in $20,000, and then engaged their first manufacturing partner, Delta Air Lines.

A manufacturing explosion

“Delta converted one of their groups from manufacturing airplane interiors to doing the face shields. They started off by manufacturing 6,000 shields, and that got the momentum going,” Leiter said. “Two thousand shields went to Mount Sinai Hospital in New York; 2,000 went to Piedmont Healthcare in Atlanta; and 2,000 went to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.”

Things began to snowball.

Graham engaged Siemens Industries to fulfill a face shield order from the Georgia Emergency Management Agency (GEMA) for distribution in Georgia. Partners from ExxonMobil began looking for more potential manufacturers. And Aflac contacted Children’s looking for worthy Covid-19 related efforts to support.

“We asked for a donation of $500,000 for manufacturers to retool their operations. Aflac made a gift of $2 million to GCMI to promote the production of PPE,” Farrugia said. “We were able to buy tooling for an automotive plastics manufacturer called Quality Model in South Carolina, and they have made over 750,000 face shields so far.”

GCMI won a bid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for 1,141,600 face shields, which are being made by Quality Model, where ExxonMobil helped rearrange production lines for shields. 

Siemens made an additional 100,000 shields from Aflac’s gift, which is also being used to purchase existing PPE to donate to healthcare workers. Kia Motors quickly produced an initial 15,000 shields, which the company financed itself.

“Kia got the open source design from the Georgia Tech website and ran with it on their own,” Saldana said. 

These partners are delivering the following number of shields: Quality Model, 1,251,600; Kia Motors, 300,000; Siemens Industries, 205,000; Delta Air Lines, 106,100; Georgia Tech, 20,000; and EIS, 15,000. And more are still to come.

The shields went across the country, from hospitals in New York City to Prisma Health in South Carolina, to nursing homes in the Pensacola area, and to rural Louisiana and Mississippi, Leiter said.

Thanks in large part to Aflac’s gift, GCMI and Farrugia are coordinating with partners, including Georgia Tech engineers, to produce N95 masks, hospital gowns, and hand sanitizer, all redesigned for the Covid-19 age.

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Media Relations Assistance: John Toon (404-894-6986) (jtoon@gatech.edu).

Writer: Ben Brumfield

The simplicity and elegance of origami, an ancient Japanese art form, has motivated researchers to explore its application in the world of materials. 

New research from an interdisciplinary team, including Northwestern University’s Horacio Espinosa and Sridhar Krishnaswamy and the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Glaucio Paulino, aims to advance the creation and understanding of such folded structures for applications ranging from soft robotics to medical devices to energy harvesters.

Inspired by origami, mechanical metamaterials — artificial structures with mechanical properties defined by their structure rather than their composition — have gained considerable attention because of their potential to yield deployable and highly tunable structures and materials. 

What wasn’t known was which structures integrate shape recoverability, pronounced directional mechanical properties, and reversible auxeticity — meaning their lateral dimensions can increase and then decrease when progressively squeezed. Though some 3D origami structures have been produced through additive manufacturing, achieving the folding properties displayed in ideal paper origami remained a challenge. 

Using nanoscale effects for an origami design, the team of researchers from Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering and Georgia Tech's School of Civil and Environmental Engineering sought to answer that question. They produced small, 3D, origami-built metamaterials, successfully retaining the best properties without resorting to artifacts to enable folding. 

“The created structures constitute the smallest fabricated origami architected metamaterials exhibiting an unprecedented combination of mechanical properties,” said Espinosa, the James and Nancy J. Farley Professor of Manufacturing and Entrepreneurship and professor of mechanical engineering and (by courtesy) biomedical engineering and civil and environmental engineering. 

“Our work demonstrated that rational design of metamaterials, with a large degree of shape recoverability and direction-dependent stiffness and deformation, is possible using origami designs, and that origami foldability enables a state where the material initially expands and subsequently contracts laterally (reversible auxeticity),” added Espinosa, who serves as director of Northwestern’s theoretical and applied mechanics graduate program. “Such properties promise to influence a number of applications across a wide range of fields encompassing the nano-, micro-, and macro-scales, leveraging the intrinsic scalability of origami assemblies.”

“Guided by geometry, the scaling and miniaturization of the origami metamaterial are exciting in itself and by the unprecedented multifunctionality that it naturally enables,” said Paulino, the Raymond Allen Jones Chair in Georgia Tech’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

“Only an interdisciplinary effort combining origami design, 3D laser printing with nanoscale resolution, and in situ electron microscopy mechanical testing could reveal the unprecedented combination of properties our work demonstrated and their potential impact on future applications,” added Paulino, who contributed to establishing the National Science Foundation Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation program named ODISSEI (Origami Design for Integration of Self-assembling Systems for Engineering Innovation).

“Just like nature has architected a wide range of structures using just a few material systems, origami allows us to engineer resilient structural components with distinct physical properties along different directions,” said Krishnaswamy, professor of mechanical engineering. 

“We can envision origami-based soft microrobots that are stiff along some directions to carry payloads while maintaining other degrees of flexibility for motion. Origami-metamaterials that exploit reversible auxeticity and large deformation can lead to multifunctional applications ranging from deployable microsurgical instruments and medical devices to energy steering and harvesting,” added Krishnaswamy, the director of Northwestern’s Center for Smart Structures and Materials.

The study presents new avenues to be explored long term, Espinosa said.

“There are a number of possibilities,” he said. “One is the fabrication of origami structures with ceramic and metallic materials, while preserving nanoscale dimensions, to exploit size effects in the mechanical response of the structures leading to superior energy dissipation per unit volume and mass. Another is the use of piezoelectric polymers, which can result in energy harvesters that can drive sensing modalities or power microsurgical tools.”

The research, “Folding at the Microscale: Enabling Multifunctional 3D Origami-Architected Metamaterials” was published in the journal Small on July 27. Along with Espinosa, Krishnaswamy, and Paulino, coauthors include Northwestern’s Nicolas A. Alderete, Zhaowen Lin, and Heming Wei, and Larissa S. Novelino from Georgia Tech.

The research was supported by the Army Research Office (award W911NF1220022), a Multi-University Research Initiative through the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR-FA9550-15-1-0009), the Office of Naval Research (grants N00014-15-1-2935 and N00014-16-1-3021), and the National Science Foundation (grant No. 1538830). Nicolas Alderete received a fellowship from the Argentinian Roberto Rocca Education Program and Larisa Novelino from the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (project 235104/2014-0).

Writer: Brian Sandalow, Northwestern University

Dr. Christine Ries has been invited to serve on a Review Panel for the New NSF Future Manufacturing Program on Eco-Manufacturing. 

This new multidisciplinary NSF program supports fundamental research and education of a future workforce that would enable the types of manufacturing that are not existent yet or are at such early stages of development they are not yet viable (Future Manufacturing). Reviews considered impacts on the economy, workforce, human behavior, and society at large.

As America’s leading research universities ramp up laboratory operations that were shut down by Covid-19 in March, they’re encountering a perfect storm of challenges in providing personal protective equipment (PPE) – surgical masks, cloth face coverings, gloves, hand sanitizer, and disinfectant materials.

Global PPE supply chains have been severely disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic, producing long lead times and unreliable deliveries. At the same time, Covid-19 precautions are mandating the use of PPE in laboratories where it wasn’t required before, such as computer and electronics labs. And as researchers, staff, and graduate students slowly come back to the lab, predicting how many people will be at work on any given day creates yet another unknown. 

At the Georgia Institute of Technology, supply chain and logistics experts have put their knowledge to work on the problem, using the kind of modeling and machine learning technologies that major retailers rely on to keep products on store shelves. In just one month, the research team has built an automated centralized system to replace traditional purchasing systems in which individual labs had to hunt for their own supplies.

By asking researchers to report details of the PPE they use each day, the labs will provide data the system needs to predict demand, allowing Georgia Tech to place large orders and stock a centralized warehouse that will help bridge the gap between supply chain hiccups. Based on usage data, the system will know when each lab’s stock of PPE needs to be resupplied from distribution centers located in 22 major laboratory buildings. The goal will be for each lab to have a robust three-day supply of PPE at all times.

“We need to make sure that every researcher, staff member, and graduate student is going to be protected properly,” said Benoit Montreuil, a professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISYE) and director of the Georgia Tech Supply Chain and Logistics Institute. “We are dealing with a very volatile situation for supply capacity, lead times, alternate sources, and reliability. With this system, we can ensure that the distribution of PPE throughout campus will be done in an efficient, seamless, responsive, and fair way.”

With $1 billion in sponsored activity during 2019, Georgia Tech has hundreds of research laboratories studying everything from viral antibodies and stem cells to robotics and electronic defense. In peak times, those researchers are expected to use 400,000 gloves a month and 20,000 surgical masks. With new sanitizing guidelines, they’re expected to use more than 4,000 gallons of hand sanitizer a month – but nobody really knows for sure, because this wasn’t widely required before.

Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, most labs were responsible for purchasing their own PPE. But with so many labs worldwide now hunting for materials in the same disrupted supply chains, that’s no longer possible.

“Georgia Tech can ensure better success in obtaining PPE by buying in very large quantities instead of asking individual lab managers to try to find stock on their own,” said Robert Butera, Georgia Tech’s Vice President for Research Development and Operations. “We can track down the best suppliers and create a buffer in the system. We’ll also be able to identify who are the most reliable suppliers.”

From individual laboratories, the system needs daily reports of how many gloves, masks, and other PPE are used. The system aggregates the numbers and uses that information to predict future usage, allowing Montreuil and his team to provide information to Georgia Tech’s Environmental Health and Safety (EHS). Baseline information obtained during Phase 1 of the research ramp-up will help plan for PPE needs as the number of researchers increases during Phase 2.

Individual labs won’t need to place orders unless than they encounter an unexpected change in demand. 

“Rather than principal investigators requesting PPE for their labs and having to anticipate demand, they will log usage and the platform will do all the back-end work to make sure there’s a three-day supply in each lab and a two-week supply in the buildings,” Butera explained. “We are switching from making requests to logging usage in real time. People have to log their use of PPE on daily basis to make sure they are supplied.”

The new system will supply an estimated 95% of PPE needed on campus. Other items that are purchased less frequently, such as lab coats and shoe coverings, will continue to be ordered through traditional means. Those other supplies may be added to the system later.

“The idea is to focus right now on the key PPEs that are most critical from a supply perspective,” said Montreuil. “We will be revising consumption predictions on a daily basis and transferring this information into an overall demand forecast for PPEs.”

Georgia Tech’s research enterprise is ramping up in two phases over the summer. The first phase began June 18, and the second will start July 13. The new PPE supply system launches July 1.

To initiate the system, EHS has provided a stock of supplies to each lab, and that initial stock will be replenished based on the new system. In Phase 2 of the research ramp-up, the system will grow to include distribution centers in more than 50 campus buildings. At this point, Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) labs will receive their PPE through a separate supply system.

PPE distribution will begin at a campus warehouse managed by EHS. To meet the predicted demand, the warehouse will regularly distribute supplies to buildings, where managers will in turn supply individual labs. How labs receive their supplies will depend on building-level plans developed by managers, Butera said.

The centralized and automated system will for the first time allow administrators to know how much stock of each PPE item is available on campus. Ensuring adequate stock has become increasingly important with the protection needs of the Covid-19 environment.

While researchers who work with biological and chemical materials are accustomed to using and maintaining PPE stocks, keeping up with face masks and disinfectant stocks will be a new practice for others. 

“In my lab in ISYE, nobody was using PPE before Covid-19 because we are only around workstations and computer displays,” said Montreuil. “Now, ISYE researchers won’t be able to get into the lab unless they have masks and we will provide hand sanitizer. We will have to get used to this change.” 

Georgia Tech has one of the world’s best industrial engineering schools, and supply chain and logistics research is a key part of that. But even that expertise is challenged by the global logistics issues created by the pandemic, he added.

“The basics of inventory replenishment systems are well known,” Montreuil said. “But most of the time, the assumptions made in the models are very different from the environment we have now. With highly disrupted settings around the world, we find ourselves on a new frontier. It’s not a lab problem, a building problem, or a Georgia Tech problem. It’s a global challenge, and it affects everybody.”

Below are some frequently-asked questions about PPE supplies.

Where is the form to log use of PPE?

The form is available at this link. 

Which PPE items are covered by the system?

Consumption of the following items should be reported: Pairs of nitrile gloves by size (S/M/L/XL), pairs of latex gloves by size (M/L), pairs of vinyl gloves, individual surgical masks, individual cloth masks, hand sanitizer by bottle, disinfecting spray by bottle, and disinfecting wipes by package.

How should consumption be reported?

Reporting usage by individual lab occupant would be most useful to the system because it will provide the most detailed data for predicting future use. But if labs cannot report usage by individuals working in the lab, they should provide daily data on the entire lab.

When are labs expected to begin reporting their daily consumption of PPE?

The system is operational now, and labs will be expected to start using it July 1.

Will GTRI labs obtain their PPE through this system?

No, GTRI has a separate system for providing PPE.

How will PPE supplies be restocked from buildings to individual laboratories?

Building managers will receive supplies from EHS and will be responsible for determining how labs will receive replenishment.

What should labs do with empty hand sanitizer and disinfectant spray bottles?

Empty hand sanitizer and disinfectant spray bottles should be returned to building managers for refill from bulk supplies. There is a shortage of bottles and reuse will help prevent shortages.

What is the lead time for PPE materials ordered from suppliers?

That varies according to the item. The median lead time for nitrile gloves has ranged from 11 to 53 days depending on glove size, with shortest for various sizes ranging between 7 and 11 days while the longest ranged between 11 and 130 days, depicting a high volatility. Supply chain challenges for hand sanitizer led Georgia Tech to work with non-traditional suppliers to create an alternative supply chain based on ethanol rather than isopropyl alcohol.

If labs will be provided with a robust three-day stock, how much will be at building depots?

Buildings should have a robust two-week supply of critical PPE items. The adjective robust is important as the aim is not to keep a stock covering an average three-day demand in labs, and an average two-week demand in buildings, but rather enough to cover demand considering consumption and supply stochasticity with degree of confidence. The three-day and two-weeks targets will be dynamically adjusted according to learning of the overall demand and supply chain dynamics.

Where can I get more information about accessing the consumption reporting system?

Please visit https://ehs.gatech.edu/covid-19/isye.

What if labs need certain supplies immediately?

An urgent request can be made using the urgent request form. At this point, ISYE is monitoring the requests and will notify the building manager. In the near future, requests will go directly to the building manager (or other point of contact). 

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Writer: John Toon

As the world contemplates ending a massive lockdown implemented in response to COVID-19, Vinod Singhal is considering what will happen when we hit the play button and the engines that drive industry and trade squeal back to life again. 

Singhal, who studies operations strategy and supply chain management at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has a few ideas on how to ease the transition to the new reality. But this pandemic makes it hard to predict what that reality will be.

“We know pandemics can disrupt supply chains, because we’ve had the SARS experience, but this is something very different,” said Singhal, the Charles W. Brady Chair Professor of Operations Management at the Scheller College of Business, recalling the SARS viral pandemic of 2002 to 2003. But that event did not have nearly the deadly, worldwide reach of COVID-19. 

“There is really nothing to compare this pandemic to,” he said. “And predicting or estimating stock prices is simply impossible, unlike supply chain disruptions caused by a company’s own fault, or a natural disaster, like the earthquake in Japan.”

For more coverage of Georgia Tech’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, please visit our Responding to COVID-19 page.

The earthquake that shook northeastern Japan in March 2011 unleashed a devastating and deadly tsunami that caused a meltdown at a nuclear power plant, and also rocked the world economy. It was called the most significant disruption ever of global supply chains. Singhal co-authored a study on the aftereffects, “Stock Market Reaction to Supply Chain Disruptions from the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake,” published online in August 2019 in the journal Manufacturing & Service Operations Management.

But COVID-19 represents a new kind of mystery when it comes to something as complex and critical to the world’s economy as the global supply chain, for a number of reasons that Singhal highlighted: 

• The global spread of the virus and duration of the pandemic. “We have no idea when it will be under control and whether it will resurface,” Singhal said. “With a natural disaster you can kind of predict that if we put in some effort, within a few months we can get back to normal. But here there is a lot of uncertainty.”
• Both the demand and supply side of the global supply chain are disrupted. “We’re not only seeing a lot of factories shutting down, which affects the supply side, but there are restrictions on demand, too, because you can’t just go out and shop like you used to, at least for the time being,” he said. “And all this is taking place in an environment where supply chains are fairly complex – intricate, interconnected, interdependent, and global.”
• Longer lead times. “We get close to a trillion dollars of products annually from Asian countries, about $500 billion from China,” Singhal said. “Most are shipped by sea which requires a four-to-six-week lead time. The fact that logistics and distribution has been disrupted and needs to ramp up again will increase lead time. So, it will take time to fill up the pipeline, and that is going to be an issue.”
• Supply chains have little slack, and little spare inventory. While manufacturing giants such as Apple, Boeing, and General Motors have more financial slack to carry them through a massive economic belt tightening, their suppliers, spread out across the globe, come in different sizes, different tiers, “and these smaller companies don’t have much financial slack,” said Singhal, pointing to a report of small and medium sized companies in China, “which have less than three months of cash. They’ve already been shut down for two months, and cash tends to go away quickly.

“Many of these companies may go bankrupt,” he added. “So we need to figure out how to reduce the number of bankruptcies. Government is going to play an important role in this, and the stimulus package the U.S. has approved will be helpful.”

Trying to get a handle on how stock markets are responding to all that has happened is like trying to take aim at a moving target during a stiff wind. Volatility has increased significantly since February 13, when the Dow Jones index reached an all-time high of about 29,500. 

“That’s because we did not expect the pandemic to spread and disruptions initially were low because of pipeline inventory,” Singhal said, noting that since then the Index dropped sharply, to 18,500 on March 23 (a decline of nearly 38 percent), it picked up and was back to 22,000 by March 30. “The same is true of other stock markets. The Chinese stock market was down 13 percent, but they seem to have the pandemic under control.”

While COVID-19 is making it difficult to predict what the market will look like, Singhal has some ideas of which industries will be most affected.

“Travel, tourism, entertainment, restaurants – businesses that rely on people going out—will take a long time to recover, in terms of profitability and stock price, even once the pandemic is contained,” he said. “People are going to be hesitant to travel after all this. Tourism will take a hit.”

Essentials like groceries are surging as people stock up in reaction to being shut in, but this isn’t a long-term trend. Singhal doesn’t expect this trend to continue as shopping habits and store shelves eventually normalize. 

Companies that sell basics, with a strong online presence, will do well, “but industries like automobiles and electronics, which have global supply chains and have a hard time replacing specialized, high-tech components will be affected,” said Singhal, who also has suggestions on the most important issues to address and how to help speed up the recovery and bring supply chains back to normal (or whatever normal looks like after this):

• The ability to bring capacity online, especially for small and medium-sized companies. “Facilities and equipment may need some time to restart,” he said. “Staffing is a big issue. How quickly can you get people back to work? Also, can you get the raw materials and build up the inventory to support production? That may be tough when pent up demand is being released and everybody is competing for limited supplies.”
• Distribution. Lead times already are long, he notes, and a sudden increase in demand for logistics and distribution services as everybody ramps up again could extend lead times.
• Prevent bankruptcies. Government programs need to be established (like the U.S. stimulus package) to keep small- and medium-sized firms in business. This concern extends to second- and third-tier suppliers, and large firms like Apple or Boeing or GM, should do the same for their most critical suppliers.
• Build slack. “Preserve cash, get new lines of credit or draw down lines of credit, maybe cut dividends or stock repurchases,” Singhal said. “And build inventories of critical components.”

Singhal also stresses the need for transparency, up and down the supply chain: “What that means is, companies need to have a good understanding of what is happening to their customers and suppliers, but not just their immediate, first tier customers and suppliers, but also their customers and suppliers, and so on up and down the line.” 

It will be very important going forward for the next several months to monitor the health of the supply chain from both the customer perspective and a supplier perspective, because this is a new world, says Singhal, who adds an optimistic postscript, “It’s a crisis situation now, but I think we can put it back together.”
   
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Writer: Jerry Grillo

Why did the gecko climb the skyscraper? Because it could; its toes stick to about anything. Engineers can already emulate the secrets of gecko stickiness to make strips of rubbery materials that can pick up and release objects, but simple mass production for everyday use has been out of reach until now.

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed, in a new study, a method of making gecko-inspired adhesive materials that is much more cost-effective than current methods. It could enable mass production and the spread of the versatile gripping strips to manufacturing and homes.

Polymers with “gecko adhesion” surfaces could be used to make extremely versatile grippers to pick up very different objects even on the same assembly line. They could make picture hanging easy by adhering to both the picture and the wall at the same time. Vacuum cleaner robots with gecko adhesion could someday scoot up tall buildings to clean facades.

“With the exception of things like Teflon, it will adhere to anything. This is a clear advantage in manufacturing because we don’t have to prepare the gripper for specific surfaces we want to lift. Gecko-inspired adhesives can lift flat objects like boxes then turn around and lift curved objects like eggs and vegetables,” said Michael Varenberg, the study’s principal investigator and an assistant professor in Georgia Tech’s George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering.

Current grippers on assembly lines, such as clamps, magnets, and suction cups, can each lift limited ranges of objects. Grippers based on gecko-inspired surfaces, which are dry and contain no glue or goo, could replace many grippers or just fill in capability gaps left by other gripping mechanisms.

Drawing out razors

The adhesion comes from protrusions a few hundred microns in size that often look like sections of short, floppy walls running parallel to each other across the material’s surface. How they work by mimicking geckos’ feet is explained below.

Up to now, molding has produced these mesoscale walls by pouring ingredients onto a template, letting the mixture react and set to a flexible polymer then removing it from the mold. But the method is inconvenient.

“Molding techniques are expensive and time-consuming processes. And there are issues with getting the gecko-like material to release from the template, which can disturb the quality of the attachment surface,” Varenberg said.

The researchers’ new method formed those walls by pouring ingredients onto a smooth surface instead of a mold, letting the polymer partially set then dipping rows of laboratory razor blades into it. The material set a little more around the blades, which were then drawn out, leaving behind micron-scale indentations surrounded by the desired walls.

Varenberg and first author Jae-Kang Kim published details of their new method in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces on April 6, 2020.

Forget about perfection

Though the new method is easier than molding, developing it took a year of dipping, drawing, and readjusting while surveying finicky details under an electron microscope.

“There are many parameters to control: Viscosity and temperature of the liquid; timing, speed, and distance of withdrawing the blades. We needed enough plasticity of the setting polymer to the blades to stretch the walls up, and not so much rigidity that would lead the walls to rip up,” Varenberg said.

Gecko-inspired surfaces have a fine topography on a micron-scale and sometimes even on a nanoscale, and surfaces made via molding are usually the most precise. But such perfection is unnecessary; the materials made with the new method did the job well and were also markedly robust.

“Many researchers demonstrating gecko adhesion have to do it in a cleanroom in clean gear. Our system just plain works in normal settings. It is robust and simple, and I think it has good potential for use in industry and homes,” said Varenberg, who studies surfaces in nature to mimic their advantageous qualities in human-made materials.

^{[Ready for graduate school with social distancing? Here's how to apply to Georgia Tech.]} 

Gecko foot fluff

Behold the gecko’s foot. It has ridges on its toes, and this has led some in the past to think their feet stick by suction or some kind of clutching by the skin. 

But electron microscopes reveal a deeper structure – spatula-shaped bristly fibrils protrude a few dozen microns long off those ridges. The fibrils make such thorough contact with surfaces down to the nanoscale that weak attractions between atoms on both sides appear to add up enormously to create overall strong adhesion.

In place of fluff, engineers have developed rows of shapes covering materials that produce the effect. A common shape makes a material’s surface look like a field of mushrooms that are a few hundred microns in size; another is rows of short walls like those in this study. 

“The mushroom patterns touch a surface, and they are attached straightaway, but detaching requires applying forces that can be disadvantageous. The wall-shaped projections require minor shear force like a tug or a gentle grab to generate adherence, but that is easy, and letting go of the object is uncomplicated, too,” Varenberg said.

Varenberg’s research team used the drawing method to make walls with U-shaped spaces in between them and walls with V-shaped spaces in between. They worked with polyvinylsiloxane (PVS) and polyurethane (PU). The V-shape made in PVS worked best, but polyurethane is the better material for industry, so Vanenberg’s group will now work toward achieving the V-shape gecko gripping pattern in PU for the best possible combination.

Also read: Lung-heart super sensor on a chip tinier than a ladybug

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Writer & Media Representative: Ben Brumfield (404-272-2780), email: ben.brumfield@comm.gatech.edu

Georgia Institute of Technology

Gaps in the supply of coronavirus tests are propelling initiatives to fill them across the country. At the Georgia Institute of Technology, bioscience researchers are burning the midnight oil to produce key components for tests in the state of Georgia.

The goal is to supply a broad initiative by the governor’s office involving multiple universities and partners to rapidly produce and administer more tests. At least 35 volunteers at Georgia Tech, while adhering to social distancing, are reorienting labs normally used for scientific discovery to do larger-scale production of biochemical components.

“We are inventing new ways of doing things like an electronic buddy system so people can be alone – but not alone – while they work in the lab. The technical part is actually the easiest. The logistics of testing, data security, and regulatory considerations – those things are more challenging,” said Loren Williams, a professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

Williams and the researchers are supporting Georgia Governor Brian Kemp’s COVID-19 State Lab Surge Capacity Task Force, which is a project managed through the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI). GTRI is also leading the coordination and integration of data management across the lab surge effort.

“We are providing technical and project management of the effort which is focused on increasing the state’s ability to expand testing beyond current limitations,” said Mike Shannon, GTRI’s lead in the project and a principal research engineer at GTRI.

Exoplanets and coronavirus

The science behind coronavirus testing is complementary to the researchers’ usual work. That includes understanding proteins associated with glaucoma, figuring out how RNA and DNA evolved in the first place, or whether ribosomes – lumps of RNA and protein key to translating genetic code into life – may exist on exoplanets.

Williams’ research team studies the last topic, and some of their work is related to the core of coronavirus testing, a chemical reaction that amplifies the virus’ genetic fingerprint. It is called a reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), and it transcribes trace amounts of coronavirus’ RNA code into ample amounts of corresponding DNA in the lab for easy analysis.

“His lab members are very familiar with RT-PCR, and when the lack of tests became apparent, they swung into action. The group grew from there, based on the technical needs for the project,” said Raquel Lieberman, another leading scientist in the effort and also a professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

“Every day, very talented, hardworking people with perfect skill sets come out of the woodwork and ask to help,” Williams said.

The group has teams that engineer the production of enzymes or other chemicals needed for RT-PCR to work: Two central enzymes are reverse transcriptase, which converts RNA to DNA and Taq polymerase, which rapidly replicates DNA. Another important component is ribonuclease inhibitor, which slows coronavirus RNA decay.

Global COVID allies

Other researchers develop processes for mass production or implementation of COVID-19 safety procedures; the list goes on. Some colleagues telework; others work in labs but spaced far from each other while they wear masks.

“The group is planning to produce enough enzyme components for hundreds of tests per day,” said Vinayah Agarwal, an assistant professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and School of Biological Sciences. “Using these components, we will also build cheaper and more robust testing kits going forward.”

Instructions already exist for some of the ingredients for the test, but they are not readily available because the rights to them are exclusive.

“Intellectual property and other proprietary issues hinder our effort,” Lieberman said. “But we have received help from scientists all over the world to piece together protocols on how to make what we need.”

The state wants to increase current testing capacities by 3,000 more tests per day. The task force also includes teams from Augusta University Health System, Georgia State University, Emory University, University of Georgia, and the Georgia Public Health Laboratory. The task force lead is Captain Kevin Caspary who is with the Georgia National Guard.

Raw footage and images as press handouts for journalists. (No commercial or personal use): 

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/f2wc2i74lz1lffl/AADLJ8dQnZMr4uEDxAiIMusoa?dl=0

Also read this: Interactive COVID-19 tool shows the importance of staying at home

External News Coverage: 

NPR - Sun Rays, Disinfectants And False Hopes: Misinformation Litters The Road To Reopening
News-Medical.Net - Georgia Tech researchers create key components for COVID-19 tests
Georgia Tech News Center- A New Normal: Researchers Across Georgia Tech Rally to Fight COVID-19 

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Writer & Media Representative: Ben Brumfield (404-272-2780), email: ben.brumfield@comm.gatech.edu

Georgia Institute of Technology

During a stroll, a woman’s breathing becomes a slight bit shallower, and a monitor in her clothing alerts her to get a telemedicine check-up. A new study details how a sensor chip smaller than a ladybug records multiple lung and heart signals along with body movements and could enable such a future socially distanced health monitor.

The core mechanism of the chip developed by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology involves two finely manufactured layers of silicon, which overlay each other separated by the space of 270 nanometers – about 0.000001 inches. They carry a minute voltage.

Vibrations from bodily motions and sounds put part of the chip in very slight motion, making the voltage flux, thus creating readable electronic outputs. In human testing, the chip has recorded a variety of signals from the mechanical workings of the lungs and the heart with clarity, signals that often escape meaningful detection by current medical technology.

“Right now, medicine looks to EKGs (electrocardiograms) for information on the heart, but EKGs only measure electrical impulses. The heart is a mechanical system with muscles pumping and valves opening and shutting, and it sends out a signature of sounds and motions, which an EKG does not detect. EKGs also say nothing about lung function,” said Farrokh Ayazi, Ken Byers Professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Stethoscope-accelerometer combo

The chip, which acts as an advanced electronic stethoscope and accelerometer in one, is aptly called an accelerometer contact microphone. It detects vibrations that enter the chip from inside the body while keeping out distracting noise from outside the body's core like airborne sounds

“If it rubs on my skin or shirt, it doesn’t hear the friction, but the device is very sensitive to sounds coming at it from inside the body, so it picks up useful vibrations even through clothing,” Ayazi said.

The detection bandwidth is enormous - from broad, sweeping motions to inaudibly high-pitched tones. Thus, the sensor chip records all at once fine details of the heartbeat, waves the heart sends through the body, and respiration rates and lung sounds. It even tracks the wearer’s physical activities such as walking.

The signals are recorded in sync, potentially offering the big picture of a patient’s heart and lung health. For the study, the researchers successfully recorded a “gallop,” a faint third sound after the “lub-dub” of the heartbeat. Gallops are normally elusive clues of heart failure.

The researchers published their results in the journal npj Digital Medicine on February 12, 2020. The research was funded by the Georgia Research Alliance, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the National Science Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health. Study coauthor Divya Gupta, M.D., a cardiologist at Emory University, collaborated in testing the chip on human participants.

Hermetically sealed vacuum

Medical research has tried to make better use of the body’s mechanical signals for decades but recording some – like waves traversing multiple tissues – has proven inconsistent, while others – like gallops – have relied upon clinician skills influenced by human error. The new chip produces high-resolution, quantified data that future research could match to pathologies in order to identify them.

“We are working already to collect significantly more data matched with pathologies. We envision algorithms in the future that may enable a broad array of clinical readings,” Ayazi said.

Though the chip’s main engineering principle is simple, making it work and then manufacturable took Ayazi’s lab ten years, mainly because of the Lilliputian scale of the gap between the silicon layers, i.e. electrodes. If the 2-millimeter by 2-millimeter sensor chip were expanded to the size of a football field, that air gap would be about an inch wide.

“That very thin gap separating the two electrodes cannot have any contact, not even by forces in the air in between the layers, so the whole sensor is hermetically sealed inside a vacuum cavity,” Ayazi said. “This makes for that ultralow signal noise and breadth of bandwidth that are unique.”

Detects through clothing

The researchers used a manufacturing process developed in Ayazi’s lab called the HARPSS+ platform (High Aspect Ratio Poly and Single Crystalline Silicon) for mass production, running off hand-sized sheets that were then cut into the tiny sensor chips. HARPSS+ is the first reported mass manufacturing process that achieves such consistently thin gaps, and it has enabled high-throughput manufacturing of many such advanced MEMS, or microelectromechanical systems.

The experimental device is currently battery-powered and uses a second chip called a signal-conditioning circuit to translate the sensor chip’s signals into patterned read-outs.

Three sensors or more could be inserted into a chest band that would triangulate health signals to locate their sources. Someday a device may pinpoint an emerging heart valve flaw by turbulence it produces in the bloodstream or identify a cancerous lesion by faint crackling sounds in a lung.

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Also read: Digital tool helps with tough COVID19 decision

These researchers co-authored the study: Pranav Gupta (first author), Mohammad Moghimi, Yaesuk Jeong and Omer Inan from Georgia Tech. The research was funded by the Georgia Research Alliance, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Technology Office’s Advanced Inertial Micro Sensors program (contract # N66001-16-1-4064), and by the National Science Foundation/National Institutes of Health Smart and Connected Health Program (grant # R01 EB023808). The team’s work with human subjects was approved by Emory University and Georgia Institute of Technology Institutional Review Boards (IRB# H18248). Any findings, conclusions or recommendations are those of the authors and not necessarily of the sponsors.

Writer & Media Representative: Ben Brumfield (404-272-2780), email: ben.brumfield@comm.gatech.edu

Georgia Institute of Technology

What-if questions can torment a doctor making coronavirus retest decisions: What if a patient’s initial negative test was a false negative, and he or she needs a second test? What if they don’t need it, and a retest would use up a scarce test kit and treatments that other patients need?

Such challenges led Piedmont Healthcare in Atlanta to establish a paper-based decision tree for ordering COVID-19 retests, and researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology turned it into an automated digital tool. Piedmont further developed the tool and has now built it into the hospital’s electronic medical record, where it influences the ordering of retests.

A user can answer their “ifs” by clicking through questions, and the “if-this-then-do-that” algorithm makes recommendations for best courses of action, ranging from immediately treating a patient for COVID-19 to retesting to consulting a specialist. The final decision remains with the physician.

The questions are deceptively simple, but the recommendations are not always obvious. That reflects the algorithm’s usefulness to fill gaps in thinking about the new sickness, which can confront clinicians with surprises.

“If a patient has not had close contact with positive patients and the first test came back negative, a physician may think the patient does not need to be retested. But actually, the patient may need a second test because they are in intensive care and also have suspicious chest X-rays,” said Georgia Tech graduate research assistant April Yu, who converted the decision tree into a digital tool.

“One of our big worries in using a brand-new test like the coronavirus test is that it will miss real cases, and this tool helps prevent that,” said Dr. Bronwen Garner, who helped develop the original decision tree and is an infectious disease specialist at Piedmont Healthcare. “It also helps reassure physicians when they get a negative result that it is probably a true negative.”

Suspenseful decision-making

A physician’s reaction to an initial negative test can mean life or death because the physician not only decides on follow-up testing but also on treatment pathways and quarantine.

“If you make a misstep in the thought process, it can lead to cascading impacts not only for the patient but also for healthcare professionals and family members, who may be exposed to the patient,” said Pinar Keskinocak, William W. George Chair and Professor in Georgia Tech’s Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering. “This tool is meant to help doctors easily stay on the decision tree path.”

Michael O’Toole, executive director of Piedmont Healthcare’s quality improvement department, originally pictured doctors getting an automated version of the decision tree to use on their phones. O’Toole called Keskinocak, and she tapped Yu, a member of her research group.

“Literally within four hours they had it ready for us. It was incredible,” said O’Toole, a Georgia Tech alumnus who studied industrial and systems engineering.

“It was a very pleasant surprise,” said Dr. Garner, who is also a Georgia Tech graduate. “Automated tools are better than a paper format because they’re in the same format as orders in our electronic system. We get notifications in real time instead of having to remember to check a piece of paper.”

The tool is in place in the system where doctors order retests and is specific to Piedmont’s workflow. It may not be directly transferable to other health care systems.

Piedmont Healthcare simplified the logic even more, and the hospital built its own custom alerts to guide physicians on retesting. For cases that are more ambiguous, Piedmont Healthcare’s final version of the tool also gives physicians inside the hospital guidance to consult with their in-house infectious disease specialists.

If-this-then-retest

In her original version, Yu had turned the decision tree criteria into a short panel of questions with yes and no answers. It took her six iterations to arrive at her final version.

Yu’s version asked whether the patient:

• has a relevant ailment
• previously tested positive for coronavirus
• is now in an intensive care unit
• has worsening lung conditions
• shows telltale lung damage in imaging
• has been diagnosed with a different ailment
• the patient has had contact with someone else who tested positive for coronavirus.

On the back end, the algorithm guided the user through risks of coronavirus presence based on the answers.

“The steps were easy to follow, and the answers were color-coded for urgency with white, yellow, and red,” said Keskinocak, who also directs Georgia Tech’s Center for Health and Humanitarian Systems.

One bright yellow answer read: “This patient needs re-testing 24 hours after the initial test!” And there were further recommendations on how to handle the case.

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Also read: Advice on DIY masks

Writer & Media Representative: Ben Brumfield (404-272-2780), email: ben.brumfield@comm.gatech.edu

Georgia Institute of Technology