Engineering in a pandemic

While the pandemic has had devastating global effects, the engineering community worked together to quickly respond to the sudden demands of corona virus, even finding opportunities for positive change.

Engineers have created emergency ventilators, diagnostic tests and manufacturing methods, helped increase hospital capacity, ensure that vulnerable people can safely get supplies and helped us all stay in touch with family and friends while social distancing.

Challenges in this STEM resource include getting creative moulding viruses, exploring what happens in an outbreak, investigating lateral flow tests, designing and developing social distancing tools, testing and trialling different types of surgical masks and investigating the tech that has helped us manage the pandemic.