A Drop of Innovation

Ateam of University of Central Florida researchers is looking at changing people’s saliva to help manage the spread of COVID-19 as the nation gets ready to go back to work and school.

The team is doing this through a recently awarded National Science Foundation Rapid Response Research Award for $200,000 to explore reducing COVID-19 transmission by making saliva heavier and stickier using candy or corn starch to help sneeze and cough particles fall rather than float.

The approach could lead to creating something as simple as a cough drop or lozenge that people would pop in their mouths before going into the grocery store, work or school.

“One way to kind of think about it is, for example, clouds are just little, tiny droplets that are suspended in the air for hours, and they just flow with the atmosphere,” said Mike Kinzel, an assistant professor in UCF’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering who is the project’s principal investigator.

“However, these droplets collide to form larger droplets that just fall out of the air,” he says. “That’s kind of the process we’re trying to promote. We don’t want the droplets to blow around with the wind like a cloud, we want them to fall out of the sky like rain.”

A way to reduce transmission distance will be especially important as people return to work and school, where maintaining six feet of social distance may be difficult, said Kareem Ahmed, an assistant professor in the department and coprincipal investigator.

“The six feet is great as a general guide, but then in a confined environment like our offices, grocery stores, public transit or hospitals, these droplets are going to interact with surfaces, HVAC systems or ventilations,” Ahmed said.

“So if we change the properties from the source, which is essentially our respiratory functions, whether it’s coughing, sneezing, speaking or breathing, then you’re simply going to reduce the amount that you’re producing, and hopefully bring the six feet to something shorter, where we can interact more,” Ahmed said.

“Based on our early data, coupling a face mask with saliva mixed with corn starch will potentially have us go from six feet to two feet for social distancing,” he said.

Leading the analyses of the effort are postdoctoral researchers Douglas Hector Fontes in Kinzel’s lab and Jonathan Reyes in Ahmed’s lab.

Fontes is running numerical simulations to study how differences in viscosity, density and surface tension impact droplet dispersal.

“Our preliminary results have shown a significant reduction in the

duration of droplet suspension in the air by changing the properties of the saliva,” Fontes said.

Reyes is using high-speed cameras to characterize the patterns and distance traveled of droplets emitted from sneezing and coughing, including those that have been altered by candy or starch. He’s finding similar reductions.

“Our data have shown that altering the physical properties of the saliva shows great promise in reducing the exposure of a sneeze,” Reyes said. “Particulates travel shorter distances and fall faster.”

As part of the research, Reyes is also supplying the sneezing.

“If you know anyone who can sneeze on command, send them my way,” Reyes said.

The team is working closely with Jelena Catania, a doctor and expert in infectious diseases at UCF’s College of Medicine and the Orlando Veteran’s Administration Medical Center, for the implementation challenges, and Brent Craven, a researcher at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, for the potential implementation.

Kinzel received his Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from The Pennsylvania State University and joined UCF in 2018. In addition to being a member of MAE’s faculty, he also works with MAE’s Center for Advanced Turbomachinery and Energy Research (CATER).

Ahmed earned his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is the director of UCF’s Propulsion and Energy Research Laboratory, a member of CATER, an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and a U.S. Air Force Research Lab Summer Faculty Fellow.

Written by Robert Wells for UCF Today.

Want to Learn More?

To learn more about Kinzel’s research, visit mae.ucf.edu/ CFAL.

To learn more about Ahmed’s research, visit mae.ucf.edu/PERL.

AI Could Be the Key to Distinguish Beteen Symptomatic and Asymptomatic Patients

You can’t tell if someone is symptomatic or asymptomatic without a test, but Associate Professor Subith Vasu is developing a monitor that can distinguish between the two with one breath.

He and statistics Associate Professor Mengyu Xu are using artificial intelligence to develop a highly sensitive monitor that will be able to determine the concentration of COVID-19 markers in exhaled gases. The monitor will also be able to detect changes in the concentration of those markers as the illness progresses.

Vasu and Xu received a $40,000 grant to work on the device. They are one of five research teams at UCF to receive funding for COVID-19-related research through the university’s new Artificial Intelligence and Big Data Initiative, which aims to fund projects that find solutions to major research questions. A total of 23 research teams applied for the competitive grants. The top projects were selected by a group of researchers, faculty and administrators with expertise in big data and AI.

“There were many really interesting and innovative projects that hold a lot of promise in the mix,” says Debra Rienhart, associate vice president for research and scholarship. “It was very difficult to select just a handful. We can’t wait to see where these projects go.”

To learn more about Vasu’s research, visit mae.ucf.edu/ VasuLab.