Shielding the Community
Bingbing Li, CSUN assistant professor of manufacturing systems engineering and management, wears a face shield created in his lab. It is using 3-D printers to create face shields for health care workers. Photo courtesy of Bingbing Li.
CSUN CREATES, DONATES PROTECTIVE GEAR FOR HEALTH CARE WORKERS
By Jacob Bennett
CSUN departments across campus worked together this past year to create potentially life-saving face shields for health care workers facing the surge of COVID-19 patients in Los Angeles.
Bingbing Li, assistant professor of manufacturing systems engineering and management at CSUN, worked hard to create face shields for organizations Including UCLA Health – West Hills, Gallup Indian Medical Center, Tzu Chi Medical Center, the CSUN National Center on Deafness and CSUN Klotz Student Health Center. In total, he donated 850 face shields, primarily in Southern California.
A 3D printer loaned by the CSUN library helps speed production for face shields to be donated to health care facilities throughout Los Angeles. Photo courtesy of Bingbing Li.
The CSUN Library’s Creative Media Studio donated 60 rolls of 3-D printer filament, necessary to make the face shields, and loaned Li two 3-D printers to increase his capacity and speed up production.
The face shields consisted of visors with an attached shield that stretches below the chin and around the sides of the face to block contagions. Li used 3-D printers in his CSUN lab to print the face shields, which took about two hours each to produce.
There were hiccups in the transition, of course. Lectures online suddenly limited the interaction between students and faculty. Students and faculty had to learn to ask and respond to questions using the Zoom chat function, which could be confusing. The format of quizzes and final exams had to be completely reimagined. The entire process of learning left students feeling frustrated at times.
But College of Engineering and Computer Science students and faculty are engineers and computer scientists – they are problem solvers at heart. They’ve found innovations, solutions and resources to make the new normal work. Communication has been constant and strong between faculty, staff and students, and over time, the feedback from students and faculty on their experience has improved.
Helping Health Care Workers
The college’s problem-solving attitude extended beyond campus. In March, even in the confusion of the transition to online learning, faculty were alert to where their skills might come in handy. When they learned of the critical shortages in personal protective equipment (PPE) that hospitals around the country and in Los Angeles were facing, they jumped into action.
Led by professor Bingbing Li, assistant professor in the Department of Manufacturing Systems Engineering and Management, faculty began producing potentially life-saving face shields for doctors and nurses on the front lines of care Using 3-D printers in his CSUN lab, Li crafted hundreds of shields for donation to intensive care units.
“The face shields protect front-liners and us. That’s my motivation. Since I have these printers and supplies. I put them to use and was ready to help,” Li said.
Meanwhile, students faced their own challenges outside the classroom. Student organizations are normally very active in national competitions. producing innovative projects that often earn national awards. The experience they gain from preparing for the competitions, the travel to different cities and the professional networking could not be recreated online. College leaders are hopeful that they can recreate the success of the outdoor labs and bring a limited number of students to campus with masks and social distancing, to prepare for competitions in the near future.
Seniors, who had worked hard preparing capstone projects all year, were initially disappointed not to have the opportunity to bring their work to in-person competitions. However, the college hosted a virtual Senior Design Project Showcase, where seniors wowed the audience with projects such as a student-built Formula One race car, a human-powered vehicle and a floating concrete canoe. Industry leaders and alumni were invited to watch and provide feedback and support.
“It gave us the opportunity to show the college what we’ve been working so hard on in the lab for a year,” said mechanical engineering senior Jacob Vorzimer.
At the end of the 2019-20 academic year, the college held a virtual commencement to honor graduating seniors and recognize the challenges they’d overcome. The hour-long celebration featured photos that students had submitted with memories of their last year as Matadors and their academic journeys – from their first day of classes to images of seniors dressed in graduation robes at home.
From hours spent in labs to pivoting to a virtual environment during a global pandemic, the Class of 2020’s experience was unique. To commemorate their time together the College of Engineering and Computer Science will present a Challenge Coin to each graduate. These coins represent the achievements and accomplishments of each student, and the close-knit bonds they forged. College leaders said they hope the coins will become a longstanding tradition, so that future graduates will be bound by a symbol of the challenges they overcame together.
Toutanji credited the college’s success in this time, in part, to the resilience of CSUN students.
“They’re often first-generation students who never really had it easy,” Toutanji said. “If you put them in these difficult times, they know how to overcome challenges. The willingness to do whatever it takes to get the job done – that was a great thing to see in the college.”
Jacob Bennett, Amy Hamaker, Liezl Bitas and Cary Osborne contributed to this report.