Howell speaks to Business Insider about membrane to capture airborne COVID-19 droplets

Business Insider interviewed University of Maine biomedical engineer Caitlin Howell about efforts to develop a bioengineered membrane to capture airborne coronavirus droplets. The National Science Foundation allocated $225,000 for the project, a joint effort between UMaine and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.  The project team, led by Howell and UMass Amherst chemical engineer Jessica Schiffman, will engineer a composite material with a liquid layer on the surface of a membrane to capture pathogenic particles for analysis. Researchers aim to develop a membrane that can be used as an insert in any air filtration system to capture virus-containing droplets and make them easier to collect from the insert for analysis. “The goal is to be able to get the information of what was there and how dangerous it was,” Howell said.