Engineers on the Battlefield

Dear Editor,

Thank you for your interesting coverage of current events, especially the COVID-19 pandemic. While the scientists, medical professionals on the frontlines, are doing an outstanding job, I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the critical role engineers are playing in overcoming challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Engineers work on maintaining the reliability of the global supply chain. A supply chain involves everything, right from the supply of materials and manufacture of products, to the delivery of finished products to the customer. Engineers work on getting enough supplies of protective equipment like N95 masks, face shields, goggles, gowns, respirators, gloves, sanitizers, and ventilators to healthcare workers and people everywhere, to keep them safe and save precious lives.

Vaccines play a very important role in helping keep billions of people safe. To figure out how to go from making a few doses in a lab to billions of doses for everyone in the world is a big engineering challenge. To solve this challenge, engineers process a lot of information through artificial intelligence and machine learning. The current COVID-19 vaccines have been developed in a record time and engineers are continuously working round the clock to come up with better ways to make and distribute the vaccines.

Engineers have even done research to know how far germs travel when someone coughs by modeling the transport of aerosol droplets. That's how we know we should be standing 6ft apart!

We can learn so much from engineers around the world. In some places like Singapore, and China, engineers are creating programs and apps, so their government can track the locations of smartphones, to help trace COVID-19 infected people.

Speaking of learning, the face of learning has literally changed during this pandemic! Although the world is socially distanced, it has never been smaller. Engineering has allowed remote working. So many technologies have been upgraded by engineers in this pandemic and have helped families stay connected through video calling. Technology like Zoom and Webex, built by engineers, is helping teachers continue teaching and also take care of their own children by being able to work from home.

This tribute to engineers would not be complete without shining the spotlight on the amazing women engineers that shape the world and are defeating challenges during this pandemic.

Professor Hanan Anis and her students have used their 3D printers to produce thousands of face shields that have been distributed all over Canada.

Lay Hian Tan, a woman engineer at Singapore worked 24/7 with her team to increase manufacturing operations of N95 respirators to help send them to healthcare workers to save lives of COVID-19 patients.

In India, three women engineers – Ranjana Nair, Aardra Kannan Ambili, and Sanchi Poovaya, designed a mini ICU system that will allow doctors and other health professionals to track respiration of multiple patients.

Lauren Gardner, is the woman engineer who is brainchild for the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 dashboard, the go-to resource to track the pandemic around the world. Researchers everywhere depend on it for their analysis and modeling.

An all women engineering team helped build a platform that enables companies and donors to “gift a hotel room” to those in need during the coronavirus crisis.

So in the words Albert Einstein, “Scientists investigate that which already is. Engineers create that which has never been.” And as they always have, I am sure engineers will meet and beat this challenge too. I hope every child and every girl out there is inspired by this article to create, problem solve and engineer. I know I am!

Thank you.