Theoretical Sciences Unit Seminar

JNCASR
Kanada Auditorium

Speaker:  Prof. Mahesh M. Bandi Affiliation:   OIST Graduate University, Japan Date:    25th March 2022  
Time:   02:00 PM Venue: Kanada Auditorium
Title: Masking it all up: Two Soft Matter solutions for the COVID-19 pandemic.

Abstract: I first read about N95 masks and their being the only viable design capable of protecting against

SARS-Cov-2 in February 2020. Academic curiosity initially led me to study their functionality, and when

masks became scarce during the pandemic's early days, I attempted manufacturing N95 masks starting

in March 2020. In the first part of my talk, I will discuss how I built a cotton candy machine in my garage

using a drill and a beer can to fabricate the dielectric fabrics used in N95 masks with discarded plastic

containers as my input material. In the second part, I'll discuss how I took my microwave oven apart to

construct a corona discharge system to electrocharge these dielectric fabrics to achieve the N95 filtration

standard.