12 ISE Magazine | www.iise.org/ISEmagazine

Students and faculty members at university engineering de-

partments around the world have rallied to help ﬁll the lack

of personal protective equipment and ventilators needed by

healthcare workers during the coronavirus pandemic. Here

is a sample of some of their projects.

A team of researchers at Georgia Tech designed a simple,

low-cost ventilator based on resuscitation bags carried in

ambulances. The device is powered by a 12-volt motor and

could help meet peak medical demands in the industrial-

ized world and for countries lacking conventional ventila-

tors. The device can serve two patients simultaneously and

can be produced from inexpensive metal stock and plastic

gearing and is powered by standard wall adapters or 12-volt

vehicle batteries.

“We believe these devices can be mass manufactured in

quantities that make a tangible impact on ventilator short-

ages nationally or worldwide,” said Kyle Azevedo, a re-

search engineer with the Georgia Tech Research Institute.

Engineers at Johns Hopkins University are developing

and prototyping a 3D-printed splitter to allow a single ven-

tilator to treat multiple patients. The device is designed to

ease concerns medical professionals have over shared venti-

lators, including lack of oxygen production and the poten-

tial for cross-contamination. The splitter design includes an

airﬂow controller and meters that allow clinicians to moni-

tor and adjust ﬂow to each patient, with a ﬁlter to prevent

contamination.

“The goal here is to quickly get this technology to hos-

pitals around the world – and right to the people who need

it the most,” says Helen Xun, a member of the team and a

third-year student at the Johns Hopkins School of Medi-

cine.

In that same vein, Binghamton University, State Uni-

versity of New York engineers have designed 3D-printed

ventilator adaptors that can serve multiple patients, They

made their designs available at link.iise.org/3dventadaptors to

those with 3D printers willing to make them and for health

professionals looking for a source.

Another team at Binghamton’s Thomas J. Watson School

of Engineering and Applied Science set up ultraviolet ster-

ilization stations to be used in area hospitals. The stations

feature large UV bulbs and foil to increase the amount of

energy available to kill a coronavirus on any surface. The

pieces can be purchased at hardware stores and assembled

in three hours.

Departments at the University of Louisville joined forces

to address the shortage of swabs in COVID-19 test kits.

The school’s Additive Manufacturing Institute of Science

& Technology, along with faculty and students from den-

News from the ﬁeld

The front line

Universities step up to ﬁll healthcare needs

Engineering departments provide ventilator, protective gear for front-line workers

Photo courtesy of Steven Norris, Georgia Tech

Georgia Tech researchers are working on a simple, low-cost

ventilator design based on the resuscitation bags carried in

ambulances.

Helen Xun, medical student and project coordinator, shows the

design of a 3D-printed splitter to allow a single ventilator to

treat multiple patients.

Photo courtesy of Will Kirk, Johns Hopkins University

June 2020 | ISE Magazine 13

tistry, engineering and medicine, designed a 3D-printed

swab made of pliable resin. Their goal was to print up to

385 swabs in less than an hour and share the process with

companies in Kentucky for large-scale production.

Bioengineering students Sienna Shacklette and Clara

Jones helped assemble 700 COVID-19 test kits that includ-

ed biohazard specimen bags, labels, sample vials ﬁlled with

viral transport media and commercially available swabs that

are in short supply. They were sent throughout Kentucky to

test individuals for COVID-19.

To help protect healthcare providers, a team at Iowa

State University has designed and created 3D-printed face

shields. They secured 30 printers aimed at making up to

2,000 face shields to help local hospitals. Allian Energy do-

nated supplies and offered funding and distribution. Stu-

dents involved in the project have rotated shifts in the near-

ly three-hour process to produce parts for one face shield

while taking care to practice social distancing.

“We’re trying to make as many as we can,” said Bryan

Dellett, third-year architecture student.

Also developing face shields are Rhode Island School of

Design alumni. Providence textile artist Jungil Hong and

Matt Muller, who runs the +design collective Pneuhaus,

teamed up to create a shield that includes a curved vinyl

cover and a simple Velcro strap to attach the device around

the user’s head that can be reused and sanitized on-site. The

Velcro strap detaches and can be disinfected in a bleach so-

lution while the vinyl cover is designed to lay ﬂat so it can

be wiped clean.

Some university members are contributing even from

home. Steve Chininis, a Georgia Tech professor in the

School of Industrial Design, found a way to make face

shields in his garage at his home in the Atlanta suburbs. He

set up 3D printers and a homemade exhaust vent and can

make up to 30 shields a day for $10 apiece.

“I’ve just been calling it the garage factory,” Chininis

told CBS46.com. “Doing stuff in your garage is such a small

thing compared to what they’re doing in risking their lives.”

Dilbert

Engineers at Binghamton University used 3D printers to create

ventilator adapters to help during the coronavirus pandemic

and are offering the designs to healthcare professionals and

manufacturers.

Photo courtesy of Binghamton University, State University of New York

Graduates from the Rhode Island

School of Design have created simple

face shields with detachable straps

to ease disinfection. The designers

are using the open-source 3D print

ﬁles created by Swedish company

3Dverksta. Textile artist Jungil Hong

and Matt Muller, who runs design

collective Pneuhaus, have teamed

up to create a face shield with a vinyl

cover and Velcro strap.

Photo courtesy of Rhode Island School of Design

Bryan Dellett, third-year

architecture student, looks over

a pair of ﬁnished visor frames

created by a team of students at

Iowa State University operating

30 3D printers to manufacture

face shields to assist with the

healthcare industry’s response

to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The work is ongoing inside the

College of Design’s Computation

and Construction Lab.

Photo courtesy of Iowa State University

14 ISE Magazine | www.iise.org/ISEmagazine

In an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19, digital tech-

nology has been deployed to monitor social contacts and

work to track those connections so anyone exposed can take

the proper precautions.

But what about the same tracking for packages? Amid

evidence that the coronavirus can live up to a day or more

on cardboard and three days on plastic, the need to protect

front-line logistics and supply chain workers is vital.

Two ofﬁcials with the logistics startup Quincus told

FreightWaves of efforts to identify package routes through

the supply chain to monitor possible contact with the virus.

“Gaining an insight into this will help companies handle

the situation better,” said Katherina Lacey, chief product of-

ﬁcer. “If someone does fall ill, they can immediately look

to identify all the packages that were in contact with the

person, aside from replacing that person with someone else,

to ensure smooth operations.”

The challenge in following all hands that touched a pack-

age is in the varying degrees of automation and logistics

found throughout the chain.

“There’s no real problem in terms of tracking for end cus-

tomers, as they can track it based on information provided

by their logistics company. But even the logistics providers

do not have complete visibility into who handles a shipment

and how it is handled once it reaches the next hub,” Lacey

said. “Yes, people are trying to track and sort them properly,

but there are human errors that need to be sorted out.”

CEO Jonathan Savoir said that he expects technology to

change how logistics companies manage shipments during

and after the pandemic.

“We are looking at optimizing and managing shipments

throughout an entire supply chain,” he said. “About a dozen

to two dozen people manage the package in that interval,

where we want to not only have digital information but

also be able to automate the scanning and tracking of the

shipment.”

the frontlinethe front line

Technology could track packages’ touch points

Logistics execs discuss efforts to monitor supply chain paths

Like working from home? Join the crowd

If you’ve been working from the home ofﬁce during the COVID-19 pandemic, you’re not alone. And if you’ve

found it to be a pleasant experience, you have company there as well. Recent Gallup Panel data show that

nearly 60% of U.S. workers who have been doing their jobs from home

would prefer to keep doing so whenever possible, while 41% would prefer

a return to the workplace or ofﬁce. The percentage of workers

offered ﬂex time or remote work options by their employer

rose from 39% to 57% in Gallup’s survey conducted March

30-April 2. Sixty-two percent of employed Americans said

they worked from home during the crisis, a number that

doubled from mid-March. Those who do tend to be

higher paid: 55% of those working from home rank in the

top 25% of earnings, while just 6.6% of those in the bottom

quartile and 15% of those in the 25-50 percentiles were working

from home, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (link.iise.org/

bls_workfromhome).

Prime Number

June 2020 | ISE Magazine 15

The use of operations research by the military goes back as far as armies existed, from Hannibal’s

effort to cross the Alps in 218 B.C. up to modern warfare. The effort to manage personnel, logistics,

supply chains, communications and strategic simulation is critical to military decision-making and

requires a data-driven approach. The new book Handbook of Military and Defense Operations Research,

by IISE member and Towson University professor Natalie M. Scala and James P. Howard II of

the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, provides educators and undergraduate students

examples of best practices in research, case studies, practical applications and lessons learned in

the ﬁeld. More than three dozen contributors provide expertise from all armed forces branches

as well as industry and academia. Articles are in four sections – approaches, soft skills and client relations, applications and

perspectives – and range from general to speciﬁc with detailed guidance on applying OR and analytics techniques to military

challenges. They are instructive both to students entering defense ﬁelds at military service academies and to service veterans

transitioning into the private sector. “What we tried to do in the book was incorporate chapters that talk about modern data

analytics for the military operational researcher. Where is this ﬁeld going and how can we use this data to implement the

models we already have?” Scala said in a recent episode of Problem Solved: The IISE Podcast at podcast.iise.org. “The military

environment is a lot different than traditional OR models. There are different objectives than a traditional IE or OR-type

problem. That’s why I wanted to do this book, to bridge this gap.”

Handbook of Military and Defense Operations Research is published by CRC Press. $152

Analytical approaches to military challenges

Research handbook tackles OR techniques in armed forces

A tiny David shows 3D printing’s potential

Re-creation of famous sculpture a model for microprocessing precision parts

One of the world’s most famous stat-

ues has been re-created by 3D print-

ing – and shrunk to a size smaller

than a grain of rice.

Michelangelo’s David, standing 17

feet tall and weighing nearly 12,500

pounds in original marble, has been

replicated in copper at 1 millimeter

in height and topping the scale at 12

micrograms.

The effort by Exaddon, a Swiss ad-

ditive manufacturing company, was

conducted to test its ability to create

precision-made, micrometer-sized

metal objects at room temperature

with no need for post-processing, the

company said.

“Our deep understanding of the

printing process has led to a new

way of processing the 3D computer

model of the statue and then convert-

ing it into machine code. That’s what

makes the new David statue so ex-

traordinary,” said Giorgio Ercolano,

an R&D process engineer at Exad-

don.

“We wanted to test the capabilities

of the machine and, also, why not?”

said Edward White, Exaddon’s mar-

keting manager.

“Everyone recognizes Michelange-

lo’s David, so when they realize that

they’re looking at a David only 1 mm

tall, it shows just what we can do.”

Exaddon’s Ceres printer creates the

parts through electrochemical dis-

position. The miniature David took

about 12 hours to print. It attempted

an even smaller version one-tenth the

size but that model lacked the same

amount of detail.

The company is looking to expand

its efforts in industrial applications,

such as microelectronics and the cre-

ation of microchips and packaging.

“This is early stage technology

and we see massive potential for it in

those industries,” White said.

This replica of Michelangelo’s David

created by the Exaddon Ceres printer is

made of copper and stands 1 millimeter

high.

Photo courtesy of Exaddon

Book of the Month

16 ISE Magazine | www.iise.org/ISEmagazine

Quote, unquote

How crisis may impact supply chain long term

“In the future, a global pandemic of this magnitude will not only be a foreseeable

event, but also will likely change how we model unknown unknowns. And

depending on how likely similar pandemics are expected to be in the future, a

whole slew of mitigation and contingency measures are likely to be considered.

Part of the risks were foreseeable and part were unknown unknowns. I’m not

sure we have all the details about the humanitarian response of those supply

chains, but once those come to light, it would be important to ﬁgure out if the

risks were ignored, the initial contingency plans were inadequate or the plans

were adequate but poorly executed. … Take toilet paper: Because it’s a commodity, manufacturers have little inﬂuence

on market prices. To be competitive, they must control costs and usually rely on high levels of automation, low levels of

labor and high-capacity utilization, with plants running 365/24/7. Such an unpredictable spike in demand – likely driven

by a vicious cycle of panic purchases and perhaps some speculators planning to make quick proﬁts in secondary markets –

quickly depleted most of the channel’s inventory. With no excess capacity, we can expect a lag until those products are back

on the shelves, which will probably be followed by more panic purchases and secondary spikes. … Some of the changes in

grocery stores, such as plexiglass protection for cashiers, changing the ﬂow of customers within stores, etc., may become

permanent. New technologies to limit transmission of airborne infections, such as new HVAC ﬁltering systems and more

intense UV disinfection protocols, could arise.”

Sergio Chayet, director of the Operations and Supply Chain Management MBA platform at Olin Business School, Washington University in

St. Louis, Missouri.

the frontlinethe front line

Another way artiﬁcial intelligence is

having an effect on the battle against

COVID-19 is in the review of research

proposals. During normal times, the

review process for research funding can

take months. Yet experts are less avail-

able due to the pandemic and a shorter

turnaround is needed to put worthy

projects on fast track.

A new AI tool from the open ac-

cess publisher Frontiers can help funders

identify research reviews and speed up

the process. The Coronavirus Review-

er Recommender is made available on

Frontiers’ Coronavirus Knowledge Hub.

It includes a funding monitor offering

a curated list of open funding calls and

other support for researchers, nonproﬁt

organizations and commercial organiza-

tions. Both tools have been developed

to help coordinate information about

the huge amount of emergency research

funding being mobilized across the globe

to solve the pandemic.

“The AI-based recommender tool is

straightforward, user-friendly and al-

lowed us to speed-up the recruiting

process,” said Simona Grasso, adviser in

health research and health innovation at

the Research Council of Norway. “In

three clicks, we managed to get a full

‘application-customized’ list over poten-

tial reviewers and their relative contact

information. This tool is highly recom-

mended.”

Frontiers’ technology team uses AI

technology to review research articles

submitted to its 79 scientiﬁc journals. It

then suggests experts based on keywords

or thorough semantic analysis of text.

“It is fantastic to see the research com-

munity rallying to solve this crisis and, in

particular, the response by funders to is-

sue rapid response calls for research proj-

ects into the virus. This, however, will

put a lot of stress on their review pro-

cesses,” said Fred Fenter, executive edi-

tor at Frontiers. “Using our AI platform,

funders can circumvent some of the dis-

ruption being created by COVID-19.

They can identify a broader pool of spe-

cialists and expedite the review process.

“Experts in ﬁelds related to corona-

virus are going above and beyond the

call of duty to save lives as clinicians and

to conduct vital research. We ask any

funder who has announced emergency

funding for coronavirus and COVID-19

research to make use of the technology,

and to exert sensibility and common

sense when contacting experts.”

AI can help review research worth funding

Frontiers creates platform to quickly and easily vet projects