FLC | Sandia scientist details labs' quiet COVID-19 contributions

Sandia scientist details labs' quiet COVID-19 contributions

April 14, 2020

Vipin P. Gupta, a research physicist at Sandia National Laboratories, detailed the myriad ways laboratory personnel are contributing to the fight against COVID-19 in a blog post published April 9 by Sandia Lab News. The blog also offered an opportunity to honor the contributions of Kenneth Miller, an artist in Sandia's advanced concepts group who passed away in 2019; Miller is listed as Gupta's coauthor on the blog.

Since before the beginnings of this outbreak, Gupta wrote, people worldwide have been purchasing a Sandia-developed decontaminant from several commercial suppliers, and using Sandia’s non-toxic, non-corrosive chemistry to kill and wipe away all trace of this new virus in hospital rooms, on ships, in subway cars, in offices and factories and emergency vehicles.

With the chance to make another significant contribution, we are starting to see the formation, multiplication and spread of "anti-viral cells" inside our labs and across Sandia’s national network of facilities, he wrote. Some of these efforts include:

* Posting activity on wiki sites where rookies, veterans and even non-technical Sandians are cross-fertilizing and actively exchanging good, bad and ugly ideas without fear of embarrassment or ostracism.

* Responses to our leaders’ calls for research and development ideas and projects.

* Special leadership assignments and rapid formation of response teams.

* Identification and recruitment of active and retired Sandians with proven track records in invention and technology adoption outside Sandia.

* Brainstorming on multiple concepts: how advanced manufacturing and rapid prototyping could be used to produce low-cost autonomous ventilators; how sunlight could be used to disinfect facemasks; how robots could be used to reduce loneliness as well as viral exposure; how materials could be made to put anti-viral protective coatings on door knobs, gloves and countertops and more.

* Consideration of new ways to do, group, fund and track applied R&D.

* Continuation of crucial Sandia national security work, protecting our R&D flanks as more are affected by and take on the pandemic.

* Resurrection of ideas and timeless wisdom in lab and personal archives from Sandians who are no longer with us (like Ken R. Miller’s drawings that pertain to today’s pandemic).