Chapel Hill Review

Biomedical engineering students from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and NC State are working together to create face masks for pediatric patients to limit exposure to COVID-19, education officials said in late April. 

“It was requested that we find a way to be able to make these pediatric masks using adult surgical masks, along with material that was already available in the hospital,” Devin Hubbard said in a UNC-CHapel Hill news release, who is one of the project leaders. 

Hubbard said that his team was asked to find a way to use adult surgical masks to create smaller coverings for patients at UNC Children's Hospital, according to the news release. The team is led by engineering students Emiley Joyce and Nicole Wiley, who created a way to fold and use a thermal rebond technique to resize the masks. 

“The BME department is well-positioned to help in these needs, and we are enthusiastic about working with our colleagues at UNC Health, FastTraCS, BeAM, as well as other departments and local industry to make an immediate impact in improving lives,” Paul Dayton, interim chair of the universities department of biomedical engineering, said in the release. 

Students at the two universities have produced more than 1,000 masks for pediatric patients, the release said. 

“This is exactly what I wanted to do by getting this kind of degree,” Joyce said in the release. “We’re finding ways to solve problems that have an impact on people in a positive way.”

Dr. Benny L. Joyner Jr., chief of pediatric critical care medicine, said that this service has been incredibly valuable for children who are immunocompromised. 

“Often, adult masks for small children are ill-fitting and do not accomplish the intended goal,” Joyner said in the statement. “It is remarkable how quickly the team identified the issue, developed a prototype, refined it and delivered a much-needed finished product that is arguably as effective as what can be found on the market.”