McKelvey School of Engineering

ChenIn the age of SARS, what the world needs is a better respirator, or breathing mask. As hospitals worldwide face major shortages of masks, Da-Ren Chen, Ph.D., assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, has developed material for a breathing mask using nanofibers so tiny and skinny that the entry of harmful particles as minute as viruses and bacteria is nearly impossible. Comprised of just less than two percent material, it is inexpensive to mass-produce, allowing companies a good profit opportunity.

Da-Ren Chen, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and environmental engineering science at Washington University in St. Louis, has developed material for one using nanofibers so tiny and skinny that the entry of harmful particles as minute as viruses and bacteria is nearly impossible.

Visiting professor Chuen-Jinn Tsai, Ph.D., and Da-Ren Chen, Ph.D., assistant professor of mechanical engineering, discuss the design of their coaxial cyclone.Washington University in St. Louis engineers have developed a device that can make the semiconductor manufacturing industry cleaner

This NASA image shows the smoke from Iraq’s oil fires set early in the confrontation.An air pollution expert at Washington University in St. Louis says the air pollution created by the Iraqi war is regional and should remain that way unless something catastrophic happens such as the torching of the Kuwaiti oil wells in the 1991 Gulf War.

The St. Louis arch has been thought to be a potential target for terrorists.Researchers at Washington University’s Center for Security Technologies are planning a surveillance system that recognizes aberrant traffic flow and then, using automatic target recognition, identifies and analyzes the danger.

It was a major step forward in a plan begun more than a decade ago to launch a nationally prominent biomedical engineering department.

The engineer is one of the world’s experts in using electrocardiographic data to image the electrical activity of the heart.

S.P. Sukhatme, chair of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board in India, will lecture on alternate energy sources; a panel discussion will follow.

Photo by David KilperHardware developed by John Lockwood scans for viruses and worms that are transmitted over a network and filters out unwanted data.John Lockwood and graduate students in his laboratory have developed a hardware platform called the “Field-programmable Port Extender.”

Thanks to biomedical engineering student Laura Seger, nearly 400 donors have registered through the Washington University Marrow Registry.