Katie was part of a team that won $500,000 in the XPRIZE Next-Gen Mask Challenge to redesign the face masks used to prevent the spread of COVID-19 by making them more comfortable, functional and affordable. Her team was lead and organized by Luminosity Labs. Here is a great story about their team.
Katie is an undergraduate mechanical engineer who worked in our lab. The NSF NEWT center supported Katie as a freshman engineer and exposed her to research concepts, developing value propositions using the NABC approach, and understanding the nature and importance of disinfection.
Katie acknowledges graduate students (Mariana Lopes, Naushita Sharma, Zhe Zhao) NSF NEWT Center in helping her creating research projects and experimental design, along with aiding her presentations and writing skills, which helped greatly for various stages of the X-Prize challenge, especially the final pitch competition.
A NSF Rapid grant on Disinfection and Reuse of Health-Care Worker Facial Masks to Prevent Infection coronavirus disease (PIs: Westerhoff, Herckes) provided early ability for her team to evaluate removal efficiency of aerosolized particles in the size range of SARS-covid2 virus. Doctoral student Zhaobo Zhang helped collect particle removal data that was featured in the Luminosity Lab video.