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JUNE 2020 I DESIGN007 MAGAZINE 83 and technical minds. To that end, we are be- ginning to develop a new speaker series that combines board design engineering with more general product design in the industry. As an example, a talk might consist of a mechani- cal engineer discussing the design of a regen- erative braking unit in an electric car while a board design engineer discusses how the unit's control board was designed given the mechan- ical and electrical constraints of the system. Another new effort will be the creation of a technical paper library that includes board de- sign engineering and related technologies for all IPC Design affiliates. To build this library, we may choose to embrace our pillar of com- petition by awarding the best submissions with recognition or prizes at industry events. In any case, we will be accepting submissions from all affiliates. Of course, the future of IPC Design is con- tingent on the future state of the electronics industry and the world at large, but we have hope. If the activity in IPC's standards commit- tees and the initial response to IPC Design are bellwethers for the future of the printed board design engineering industry, then these first programs will only be the tip of the iceberg in- sofar as what we can accomplish. DESIGN007 Patrick Crawford is the manager of design programs and related industry programs at IPC. To read past columns or contact him, click here or email PatrickCrawford@ipc.org. A research team led by Pirouz Kavehpour, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering in the UCLA Sam- ueli School of Engineering, is developing an inexpensive and fast Breathalyzer-like diagnostic tool to test for the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. "Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed a critical weakness in health care security infrastruc- ture, which is a substantial deficiency in our capabili- ties to conduct rapid, simple, point-of-care diagnostic and environmental sample collection and testing," said Kavehpour, who is the principal investigator on the re- search. Kavehpour's team has received a one-year, $150,000 research grant from the Nation- al Science Foundation. "The goal in this research is to develop cheap, massively de- ployable, rapid diagnostic and sentinel systems for detecting respiratory illness and airborne viral threats," said Kavehpour, . The design could also be al- tered to detect other infectious diseases and airborne viral threats by continuously mon- itoring the air of indoor envi- ronments, such as hospitals, schools and airports, for the presence of the dangerous levels of virus. The concept is based on an environmental water con- densation technology developed by Kavehpour and his research group. They have applied for a patent for the design. Although similar in use to Breathalyzer tests designed to check blood alcohol levels, which use infrared light to measure blood alcohol levels, the method behind the COV- ID-19 diagnostic test is different. For the coronavirus test, a person would exhale into the device for about a minute. Water vapor from their breath would condense on a special plate. Live virus and virus RNA could then be screened by using fluorescent genetic tags that light up if the virus is present. It could take about 10 minutes to show results. If the design is successful and meets all federal criteria, test kits could be in production as early as fall 2020, said Ka- vehpour, who is also a professor of bioengineering. (Source: Matthew Chin, UCLA Newsroom) UCLA Team to Develop Breathalyzer-Like Diagnostic Test for COVID-19 Pirouz Kavehpour