UK Gets NSF Funding to Develop Face Mask that Can Deactivate COVID-19
University of Kentucky engineering professor Dibakar Bhattacharyya recently announced he had the concept and the means to develop a medical face mask that would capture and deactivate COVID-19 on contact. Now, the director of UK’s Center of Membrane Sciences, along with collaborators from two different disciplines, has received a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to make these masks a reality.
“We have the capability to create a membrane that would not only effectively filter out the novel coronavirus like the N95 mask does, but deactivate the virus completely. This innovation would further slow and even prevent the virus from spreading. It would also have future applications to protect against a number of human pathogenic viruses.”
Bhattacharyya, known to friends and colleagues as “DB,” secured support through a Rapid Response Research (RAPID) grant from the NSF, which has called for immediate proposals that have potential to address the spread of COVID-19. The grant provides $150,000 over one year. DB will serve as the principal investigator (PI) and engineering faculty members J. Todd Hastings and Thomas Dziubla, as well as Yinan Wei from the UK Department of Chemistry, will contribute as Co-PIs.
For the RAPID project, the team will create a membrane mask and other flat sheet materials with a more porous and spongy structure that will include charged domain and enzymes, which would capture and effectively deactivate SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.