He also volunteered at a drive-thru testing site, preparing people to be swabbed. The majority of people at this site tested positive, he said. In both roles, Glidden said extra safety precautions were taken; he felt safe. He urged others to take the quarantine and social distancing seriously. He was supposed to be in Colorado for part of April working with the UA Remote Sensing Center in a research project, but said he was glad to be in this role. John Glidden III volunteered as an EMT during the spring in his hometown of Closter, New Jersey. Photo courtesy of John Glidden III.
UA Senior Working Pandemic Front Lines in NYC Area
UA Kick-Starts Six Projects Related to COVID-19 and Future Pandemics
Although this is not what John Glidden III envisioned for the home stretch of his senior year, he used the change in circumstances to help his hometown get through the COVID-19 pandemic.
Six projects designed to deepen understanding of the coronavirus pandemic and future pandemics and positively influence society will receive seed funding from The University of Alabama.
Instead of being in Tuscaloosa wrapping up his final classes as a student in aerospace engineering and prepping to start a job with Lockheed Martin, Glidden was in Closter, New Jersey, volunteering as both an EMT for Closter Volunteer Ambulance and Rescue Corps, a non-profit ambulance service, and at a drive-thru virus testing site.
The projects come from across disciplines on campus, and were selected through the University’s Joint Institute Pandemic Pilot Project, sponsored by the UA Office for Research and Economic Development and UA’s research institutes.
Located about 15 minutes away from New York City, an early epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S., Closter is dealing with cases from the novel coronavirus as well. Glidden worked for the only 911 ambulance service in town, and the majority of calls were related to COVID-19, he said. Glidden started volunteering with the ambulance service in high school, earning his EMT certification just after graduating. He worked with them when he was home from college. When he found himself unexpectedly home for nearly two months before his move to Orlando, Florida, to start work with Lockheed Martin, he returned to the ambulance service. Some of the other EMTs and other personnel with the service are in groups vulnerable to COVID-19 and some got sick, he said.
Support for the projects comes from the Alabama Transportation Institute, Alabama Water Institute, Alabama Life Research Institute and the UA Cyber Initiative. The effort was guided by the strategic plan for the Office for Research and Economic Development that encourages interdisciplinary and transformative research. Along with the viability of projects to garner external funding after being established, the review process of proposals emphasized a project’s potential to sustain beyond the current global pandemic stemming from COVID-19 and scale to other large challenges. Two of the projects have ties to the UA College of Engineering: • Development of a model to track
DRIVING INNOVATION
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