Canadian team one of two to win $20-million global tech competition yahoo.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from yahoo.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Arizona universities play key role in Covid recovery
People use a footbridge over University Avenue on the campus of Arizona State University on Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2020, in Tempe, Ariz. (AP Photo/Matt York)
My parents arrived in Arizona from India in the early 1990s, settling in an economy disrupted by a national recession in 1991. Despite this, Arizona’s rugged desert landscape and dry heat quickly became home for my family. Throughout the last decade of the 20th century my family grew slowly, first with the addition of a loving American Eskimo and later with my own birth, and as my family grew so did the state in which we lived. Now 30 years later, Arizona is a different place, one offering broad new levels of opportunity and ways to thrive.
Feb. 4, 2021
University students and faculty are responding to the COVID-19 pandemic with new advancements in face mask technology. (Photo courtesy of ASU Luminosity Lab)
ASU Luminosity Lab’s FloeMask is designed to promote an antifogging and cooling mask experience. Developers hope comfortable masks will eliminate one objection to wearing them. (Photo courtesy of ASU Luminosity Lab)
PHOENIX – Since the onset of the pandemic, health experts have touted masks as the best way to reduce the spread of COVID-19, but wearing them in public met considerable resistance and was politicized in some places.
That was true in Arizona, where Gov. Doug Ducey initially opposed mask mandates sought by local officials.
COURTESY OF TEAM POLAIR
The team of undergraduates designed their winning face mask with help from the Whiting School of Engineering and industry sponsors.
Team Polair, a Hopkins team of 25 undergraduate Biomedical Engineering students, took runner-up in the XPRIZE Next-Gen Mask Challenge, winning $250,000 for the design of a clear, adaptable face mask. The four-month international contest, sponsored by California nonprofit organization XPRIZE, challenged participants to design face masks that are user-friendly and safe for the environment.
For months, the team worked on developing their prototype while collaborating with Honeywell. Team Polair focused on adaptability, sustainability and comfort as they sought to create a mask that people would want to wear.
ASU students win $500,000 top prize in mask contest In the ASU Luminosity Lab team s bifurcated Floemask design, exhaled air is directed out the filter, rather than out of the top of the mask preventing glasses from getting fogged up. (Source: ASU website) By Shelby Trahan | December 24, 2020 at 10:14 AM MST - Updated December 24 at 10:14 AM
TUCSON, Ariz. (KOLD News 13) - Innovation at its finest. A team of Arizona State University students just won $500,000 for designing a new and improved face mask.
According to their website, the XPRIZE Next-Gen Mask Challenge “aims to reimagine protective face masks used to prevent the spread of COVID-19 by making them more comfortable, functional, accessible, and even stylish.”