Virginia Tech Professor Develops Surface Treatment for COVID-19
It's been quiet all around the campus of Virginia Tech during the spring and summer of 2020. One exception would be Goodwin Hall where Dr. William Ducker's team has been hard at work on a major breakthrough in the fight against COVID-19.
Dr. Ducker — a chemical engineering professor — has been working on a substance that when painted on a surface has been shown to reduce the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus load by 99.9% within an hour.
“The idea is when the droplets land on a solid object, the virus within the droplets will be inactivated,” Ducker said via a Virginia Tech news release.
His team features PhD. chemical engineering graduate students Saeed Behzadinasab and Mohsen Hosseini and Xu Feng from the university’s Department of Chemistry. They've also been collaborating with Leo Poon, a professor and researcher at the University of Hong Kong’s School of Public Health.
The development could prove to be invaluable to easing the COVID-19 pandemic and returning society to some degree of normalcy. And yes, this includes sports as the college football season rapidly approaches.
“Everybody is worried about touching objects that may have the coronavirus,” said Ducker.
“It would help people to relax a little bit.”
Though in this case the stakes are considerably higher on a global scale, it's hardly the first time Hokie engineers have assisted in athletics.
The Virginia Tech Helmet Lab developed the first comprehensive testing and safety rating system for athletic helmets. In partnership with the Wake Forest University School of Medicine, their research on concussions and helmet safety has provided valuable information for consumers and important data on safety risks in contact sports.
There's also the example from 2005 when running back Cedric Humes fractured the ulna, a bone in his arm.
Head trainer Mike Goforth turned to Brian Love — a professor of materials science and engineering — and his biomaterials class to see if they could create a tougher brace for Humes.
In an effort to provide more support to the healing bone, they made an alternative bracing system utilizing different materials to an off the shelf brace. Again with an assist from the Wake Forest University School of Medicine, the class completed the project two days before the No. 3 Hokies played host to No. 13 Boston College.
Humes carried the ball 13 times for 40 yards that night while wearing the brace in a 30-10 win. He was able to finish his senior season as Tech's leading rusher and helped the Hokies to a No. 7 finish in the national rankings.
This time around finding a solution to a problem is about far more than just football helmets and arm braces, but it's clear Virginia Tech engineers are on the case of easing the pandemic.
Ut Prosim at work yet again.
