Student research: helping to fight COVID-19 and other diseases

conceptual sketch of smart UV lamp
Conceptual sketches for amodular UV lamp designed by students under the supervision of Professor Joyce Poon. (Courtesy Professor Joyce Poon)

 

How can we safely and quickly disinfect surfaces with minimal cost?  This is a question that everyone from public transit operators to grocery store managers have had to ask since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

Frequent sanitizing of high traffic surfaces became a requirement to ensure public and employee safety.  But the cleaning can be time-consuming, difficult, and expensive.

Now a team of U of T Engineering students under the supervision of Professor Joyce Poon (ECE, EngSci 0T2) has designed a smart UV lamp with advanced sensors that could do the job more efficiently and cheaply than existing techniques.

At various times over the past year the team has included EngSci student Christopher Alexiev (Year 3 EngSci), Alec Xu (Year 3 EngSci), Bipasha Goyal (Year 3 EngSci), Jordan Hong (Year 3 EngSci), and alumna Saila Maham Shama (EngSci 2T0).

Read the full story of how they continued their fruitful research despite pandemic restrictions, and where the project is headed next.