COVID-19 Engineering Solutions

Responding to a shortage of expensive international ventilators, engineers developed domestically built alternatives.

Artificial intelligence is harnessed to accelerate drug repurposing in the search for COVID-19 solutions.

Nanomaterial design and strategies are at the forefront in developing advanced antiviral and antibacterial therapies.

In an unprecedented effort of scientific collaboration, researchers across fields are racing to support the response to COVID-19. Making a global impact with AI tools will require scalable approaches for data, model and code sharing; adapting applications to local contexts; and cooperation across borders.

As the spread of SARS-CoV-2 has triggered worldwide closures of research labs and facilities, Kostas Kostarelos shares his views on what may be going wrong in the fight against COVID-19 and how the nanoscience community could and should contribute.

The attention and resources of AI researchers have been captured by COVID-19. However, successful adoption of AI models in the fight against the pandemic is facing various challenges, including moving clinical needs as the epidemic progresses and the necessity to translate models to local healthcare situations.

The COVID-19 pandemic poses a historical challenge to society. The profusion of data requires machine learning to improve and accelerate COVID-19 diagnosis, prognosis and treatment. However, a global and open approach is necessary to avoid pitfalls in these applications.

Nanotechnology-based antimicrobial and antiviral formulations can prevent SARS-CoV-2 viral dissemination, and highly sensitive biosensors and detection platforms may contribute to the detection and diagnosis of COVID-19.

A global effort is ongoing in the scientific community and in the maker movement, which focuses on creating devices and tinkering with them, to reverse-engineer commercial medical equipment and get it to healthcare workers. For these ‘low-tech’ solutions to have a real impact, it is important for them to coalesce around approved designs.

Does smartphone surveillance have a role to play in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic?

Further COVID-19 outbreaks are unavoidable. To detect and suppress them, governments ought to implement a range of public health measures aided by technology.

Research activities in the areas of X-ray imaging and ultraviolet sterilization illustrate how photonics is helping to combat the threat of COVID-19.