Our university has joined forces with Portsmouth and Bournemouth universities are in a mission to address the wide-ranging challenges of COVID-19.
Innovative projects at all three south coast institutions have won funding through a regional competition by the Wessex Academic Health Science Centre. The projects will share a total of £20,000 to get their pioneering ideas off the ground.
Professor Peter Smith, Wessex Academic Health Science Centre committee member and Director of our Institute for Life Sciences, said: “This is a great example of Southampton, Portsmouth and Bournemouth universities working together to tackle some of the difficult challenges that COVID-19 has thrown up, and we look forward to seeing these excellent projects develop.”
The Southampton projects awarded funding include:
- A 10 minute testing kit for SARS-CoV-2: Franklin Nobrega, Lecturer in Microbiology, is developing a Bluetooth-enabled sensor that would enable non-expert users to diagnose themselves, sending the results of their swab test direct to their phone via an app;
- A community project working with sewing clubs to produce facemasks for people working in public places such as supermarkets and pharmacies, led by Roxana Carare, Professor of Clinical Neuroanatomy;
- The development of non-thermal plasma to disinfect facemasks, led by Minkwan Kim, Lecturer in Astronautics;
- Establishing a contactless facemask fitting system using camera sensors to generate a 3D model of the face, led by Hansung Kim, Assistant Professor in the School of Electronics and Computer Science.
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