In response to the pandemic, SEAS faculty and staff have been working in collaboration with other researchers in numerous fields at Yale and in industry to develop innovations to help healthcare workers treat patients in the fight against COVID-19. By pooling resources and expertise, Yale researchers took a multidisciplinary approach to this work. These efforts have included working on alleviating the critical shortage of respirators and other personal protective equipment, developing multi-patient ventilators and repurposing their work to track the spread of the virus. For a more detailed look at these efforts, see the articles and videos below:
Service
06/05/2020
Yale App Hunala Aims to be ‘Waze for Coronavirus’
The free app provides a daily snapshot of personal and regional risk for COVID-19 infection based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and users’ self-reported health and demographic information.
05/07/2020
Testing System Gives Hospital ‘New Options’ for Crucial Respirators
At a time when hospitals are running low on personal protective equipment, a Yale-built system that tests non-certified respirators and masks has opened up valuable new options for healthcare workers.
04/23/2020
Small But Critical Ventilator Parts Run Low, So Researchers Make Their Own
The need for ventilators in response to COVID-19 has been well publicized, but the single-use parts that comprise these machines has also been running critically low in hospitals. To ensure that Yale’s healthcare professionals remain in stock, researchers have taken to making their own.
04/22/2020
Wilczynski and Peccia Speak at School of Medicine's Dean's Workshop
SEAS Deputy Dean Vincent Wilczynski and Prof. Jordan Peccia, spoke at Friday’s Virtual Dean’s Workshops addressing, a series hosted by School of Medicine Dean Nancy Brown to address COVID-19 issues.
04/15/2020
CHIME: How Yale's Engineers and Doctors are Innovating to Combat COVID-19
The COVID-19 crisis has put a significant strain on the U.S. healthcare system and the availability of essential personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare workers. The Coalition for Health Innovation in Medical Emergencies (CHIME) - which draws on expertise from across the university - rapidly came together to help provide healthcare professionals the tools they need.
04/09/2020
With an Urgent Need, Researchers Develop Multi-Patient Ventilators
Shuttered labs and social distancing haven’t gotten in the way of two research teams’ efforts to create a ventilator capable of treating multiple patients.
04/02/2020
Yale leaders talk about COVID-19: Jeffrey Brock, School of Engineering & Applied Science Dean
An interview with Dean Jeffrey Brock about the university’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
03/26/2020
Yale Experts Pool Resources, Skills to Increase COVID-19 Medical Supplies
From computer simulations of new medical technology durability to simplified PPE designs for mass production, a coalition drawing on expertise from across the university is working to help provide healthcare professionals the tools they need to fight COVID-19.
Research
05/06/2020
New Wristband Monitors Personal Exposure to Air Pollution
Whether it comes from second-hand cigarette smoke, motor vehicle exhaust, building materials or the fumes from household cleaning supplies, toxic air is all around us.
05/05/2020
Prof. Edward Kaplan Brings Operations Research Tools to Local COVID-19 Decision Making
A global pandemic is also a local crisis. City and state governments, companies and organizations, and even individual households all have to make decisions about how to respond. Those decisions are complex and made under intense time pressure—and they can have vast consequences.
05/05/2020
HASTE Data Workshop: Using Technology to Curb COVID Spread
How we can use technology to reliably track and stem the spread of COVID-19 without diminishing personal security or privacy was among the topics discussed at the fourth HASTE Data Workshop.
04/29/2020
A Method for Screening Non-Certified Respirators: A Scientific Analysis
Based on several weeks of testing respirators that have not been certified by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Yale researchers have written a scientific documentation on a system they developed to examine the performance of non-certified respirators and masks.
04/29/2020
Researchers Devise New Model to Track COVID-19’s Spread
Yale University researchers and colleagues in Hong Kong and China have developed an approach for rapidly tracking population flows that could help policymakers worldwide more effectively assess risk of disease spread and allocate limited resources as they combat the COVID-19 pandemic.
04/22/2020
Researchers Discuss Repurposing Their Work for COVID-19 at HASTE Data Workshop
Yale researchers discussed ways they have repurposed their work to address the COVID-19 outbreak at the third HASTE Data Workshop. The workshop, held Tuesday over Zoom, featured speakers Mark Gerstein, Michael Rutenberg Schoenberg, and Jordan Peccia.
04/16/2020
Visual and Biomedical Datasets the Focus at Second HASTE Data Workshop
What an 1854 map of a London neighborhood can tell us about the current COVID-19 outbreak, and how researchers can use certain datasets to fight the virus were among the thought-provoking ideas presented at the second HASTE Data Workshop.
04/13/2020
Racing a Pandemic: Yale Scientists Design New Ways of Tracking COVID-19
In a perfect scenario, individual COVID-19 testing would be widely and readily accessible. In reality, tests are still in short supply, and likely cases far outnumber testing capacity, making the prevalence and trajectory of the disease hard to measure.
04/09/2020
Researchers Bring COVID-19 Research to First HASTE Data Workshop
The first HASTE Data Science Workshop, held Thursday, brought together researchers from numerous disciplines to present COVID-19-related research and discuss how members of the Yale community can contribute.
04/03/2020
To Relieve a Critical Shortage, a Way to Test Face Masks
With certified face masks at a critical shortage, a team of researchers at the School of Engineering & Applied Science are developing a system to test the reliability of non-standard face masks.
03/26/2020
How Viruses Spread: Q&A With Jordan Peccia
We spoke with Peccia, the Thomas E. Golden, Jr. Professor of Chemical & Environmental Engineering, about the need to study where harmful microbes are, how they transmit from one person to another and how COVID-19 could change long-term perceptions about respiratory illnesses.
Education
04/30/2020
At the CEID, a Social Distance Robot and Other Ways to Bring a Makerspace Online
How do you get people up to speed on circuitry in a way that’s particularly relevant to these times? Teach them to build a social-distancing robot.
04/24/2020
Remotely, Ventilator Device and Other Projects Continue On
The course Computer-Aided Design (MENG 400), taught by Ronald Adrezin, involves a fair amount of hands-on work. Although the class operated remotely the second half of the semester when the campus shut down to prevent the spread of COVID-19, students, faculty and staff pulled together to get the work done.
04/16/2020
Teaching Online: The Teamwork Behind the Scenes
When courses moved online at the end of March, it was an entirely new way of teaching for many faculty. Getting everyone up to speed in a short time required a team effort.
04/01/2020
Switching from Robots to Ventilators: How a Class Responds to COVID-19
When students in Mechatronics (MENG 390) left for spring break, they expected to begin work on two-wheeled balancing robots upon their return. When classes resumed, though, their end-of the-semester class project had changed to exploring new ventilator designs.
04/01/2020
Katherine Schilling Shares Tips on Proceeding with Yale's Poorvu Center
With the unprecedented situation that Yale and other universities are going through in the efforts to stop the spread of COVID-19, sharing information on how to proceed is critical. To that end, Katherine Schilling served as the featured speaker in the first of the Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning’s “Continuity Community” series. Her topic was on how to keep lab courses going online.
04/01/2020
Maintaining Lab Continuity in the Time of COVID-19
When Yale took the necessary step of moving classes online to mitigate the spread of Covid-19, it presented a particular challenge for courses that focus on building complex devices and other hands-on projects. At the School of Engineering & Applied Science, which has no shortage of such courses, staff and faculty mobilized quickly to ensure that students will be able to continue working on their projects and lab courses, even miles from campus while working from their homes.
Videos
05/08/2020
Yale at the Frontier: Rising to the Challenges of COVID-19
04/18/2020
Yale Engineering Innovations To Target The COVID-19 Pandemic
04/18/2020
Tracking the Progression of The COVID-19 Epidemic Through Domestic Waste Water
