When 51ÁÔÆæ temporarily shuttered buildings in spring 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, one team of researchers began their groundbreaking work on the empty campus. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
That team has now completed their project, funded in April 2020 by a $198,326 National Science Foundation COVID-19 RAPID grant: they have developed an easily applied, spray-on coating that repels and deactivates COVID-19 droplets that land on surfaces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The coating is called XPAC and it could improve our nation\u2019s preparedness for future waves of COVID and other airborne pathogens, adding a way to break a virus\u2019s chain of transmission, said Konstantin Sobolev, principal investigator and professor of civil and environmental engineering in 51ÁÔÆæ\u2019s College of Engineering & Applied Science. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In addition to Sobolev, the XPAC research team consisted of Nikolai Kouklin, co-prinicipal investigator and professor, electrical engineering; Michael Nosonovsky, co-principal investigator and associate professor, mechanical engineering, and David Frick, professor, chemistry\/biochemical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The team was assisted by engineering doctoral student Filip Zemajtis, who recently wrote and successfully defended a dissertation on XPAC coatings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n