[Ground-station] Fwd: COVID-19 Microwave Inactivation Research - Parts needed

[Michelle Thompson]

If you can help Tony Long out, please get in touch with him.

-Michelle W5NYV




---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Tony Long <tonylong at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Jul 21, 2020 at 5:13 PM
Subject: COVID-19 Microwave Inactivation Research - Parts needed
To: <sdmicrowave at googlegroups.com>, <sbms at ham-radio.com>


Fellow microwavers - it is time to apply your hobby to help save lives!
I'm part of a small consortium working to determine whether the COVID-19
virus can be inactivated with RF energy.  One of my colleagues  published
results a few years back with a different virus and it showed that the
virus in question could be destroyed with a very reasonable field strength
in the few Ghz range.  Simulations show that the COVID-19 virus (which has
a polarized, spherical shell) should resonate somewhere roughly in the 8-12
GHz range.  We need to find the resonance(s) so we can build devices to
destroy the virus.

Our test setup will involve two phases - first is spectral absorption
measurement of a sample held between two horn antennas inside a bio-safety
fume hood.  We want to do this at very low power levels to avoid destroying
the virus before it is characterized.  Phase two will involve determining
the energy density required to inactivate the virus.

We are starting first with a similar, but non-human coronavirus and if it
shows promise we will move to the COVID-19 virus in a bio-hazard level 3
facility at either UC Irvine or Duke University.  The academic team is
working to get fast track funding now.

I would like to get a test setup going as soon as possible so that we can
get this  into the labs functional and with minimal intervention.  To that
end, this Friday, Rohde & Schwarz is dropping off a high performance VNA
but I need some other loaner parts until we get budget to buy them.  I
imagine that among this community we can cobble together components and
would love to have the amateur microwave community contribute to this
important effort.  I'll let you imagine how useful RF decontamination might
be for a variety of scenarios.

Here's the team we've assembled:

Dr. Brian Wong <https://www.uclahealth.org/brian-wong> – Pulmonary,
Critical care at UCLA

Dr. Matthew Brenner <http://www.bli.uci.edu/mattbrenner/> – Professor of
Pulmonary Medicine at UC Irvine

Dr. Donald Forthal
<http://www.immunology.uci.edu/profiles/forthal-donald.asp> – Professor in
the Center for Virus Research at UC Irvine

Fred Mohamadi <http://www.tialinx.com/> PhD. – founder of Tialinx, Inc.

Zhongping Chen <https://engineering.uci.edu/users/zhongping-chen> PhD. –
Professor of Biomedical Engineering, UC Irvine

Chi-Kuang Sun
<http://gipo.ntu.edu.tw/eng/e_p6student-5-detail2.php?sn=25&is_manage=0&title_code=01>
PhD. – Distinguished Professor Photonics and Optoelectronics, National
Taiwan University

Tuan Vo-Dinh <https://bme.duke.edu/faculty/tuan-vo-dinh> PhD. – Professor
of Biomedical Engineering, Duke University

Steve Stone – Senior Technical Fellow, Northrop Grumman


If you have the following equipment or know someone at a company that would
like to loan equipment to the cause it would be greatly appreciated!


Tony Long KC6QHP


WR-90 15 dB standard Gain horn antenna (need two)

WR-137 10 or 15 dB standard gain horn antenna (need two)

WR-90 to N transitions (need two)

WR-137 to N transitions (need two)

A pair of quality test cables (unclear what sizes are needed but likely 36
inches), with N terminations

~10 watt power amplifier covering 5-18 Ghz

High power attenuator (18 Ghz, 30dB, 20 watts max)

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"SDMG" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
email to sdmicrowave+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sdmicrowave/CA%2BcMJiuJsftHmg-ZTKGfER2dd74jKN9NKjRu_Rfmnkb-7bCvTQ%40mail.gmail.com
<https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sdmicrowave/CA%2BcMJiuJsftHmg-ZTKGfER2dd74jKN9NKjRu_Rfmnkb-7bCvTQ%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>
.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openresearch.institute/pipermail/ground-station-openresearch.institute/attachments/20200721/3b0751f6/attachment.html>