ChBE Researchers Involved with COVID-Related Efforts

Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, ChBE researchers have stepped up to employ their expertise in efforts to enhance safety, testing, and vaccination. Here is a sampling of related projects:

Solving Sanitizer Shortage

A team of Georgia Tech researchers, including ChBE Professor of the Practice Chris Luettgen, began in March 2020 to address a national shortage of hand sanitizer.

By June, the team had replaced a key component of sanitizer, created a new supply chain, and initiated their own donation of 7,000 gallons of a newly designed sanitizer to medical facilities. It’s called Han-I-Size White & Gold for the colors of Georgia Tech.

The new supply chain, the first of its kind, of “waiver-grade” ethanol, has given hand sanitizer producers across the country a new opportunity to re-supply America.

The new supply chain also may ensure that hand sanitizer producers across the country do not run out of the main active ingredient, alcohol.

It was not easy overcoming supply chain barriers and bureaucracy, says Luettgen, who knew how to take products to market from his 25 years at KimberlyClark Corporation. Neither the supply chain nor the business relationships had existed before.

“Hopefully, we helped solved a national need,” Luettgen says.

Air Quality in Classrooms

As Georgia Tech has resumed limited in-person instruction during the coronavirus pandemic, Professor Nga Lee “Sally” Ng has been monitoring the air quality of select classrooms on campus.

“Indoor air quality is an important topic, and a pandemic makes it even more so,” Ng says.

To date, Ng’s lab has installed 13 low-cost sensors in various classrooms across campus (30 is the ultimate goal). These sensors are providing real-time air quality data that will help guide future air-quality measures.

The sensors monitor particulate matter (PM) of various sizes as well as other gas pollutants, including ozone, nitric oxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide, along with temperature and humidity and other meteorological parameters.

Improving Testing Technology

Graduate student Chiamaka Obianyor has lent her skills to improving COVID-19 testing technology as part of two teams at Georgia Tech.

“It’s great to be able to help,” says Obianyor. “My expertise in molecular biology and nucleic acids has proven useful.”

As part of the interdisciplinary GT Test Kit Support Group, Obianyor helped develop components for test kits that use a reactioncalled the reverse a patient by taking that RNA and converting it to DNA. The DNA is then amplified by the chain reaction and tagged with fluorescent probes, making it easy to spot.

Now done with her role in that project, Obianyor continues to work with the Georgia Tech Research Institute on developing a different type of point-of-care kit that could deliver results in less than 30 minutes using Loop Mediated Isothermal Amplification (LAMP) assays.

Patches for Vaccine Delivery

Professor Mark Prausnitz’s laboratory is carrying out two small projects in support of the fight against COVID-19. Through a recent seed grant from NIH, lab members are developing a microneedle patch to administer a skin-targeted COVID-19 vaccine under development by collaborators at HarvardMedical School.