GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — During the COVID-19 pandemic, N95 masks went from an afterthought to a must-have item. Scientific debate and haranguing aside, most would agree that they aren’t inherently comfortable and they pose some problems when it comes to communicating with others.
Researchers at the University of Michigan have developed an alternative that aims to eliminate each of those issues. It’s a wearable “air curtain” that prevents 99.8% of aerosols from reaching a person’s face.
Herek Clack, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and the co-founder of a university-sponsored startup called Taza Aya , has been working on the technology for nearly a decade.
“It started when I joined the University of Michigan as a faculty member,” Clack told News 8. “New faculty have to kind of work hard in their early years, and a colleague of mine and I just kind of informally got together. We both started the same year. And we said, ‘What do you do?’ ‘Here’s what I do.’ ‘How can we work together?’”