More than a mask

Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering Associate Professor Abdennour Abbas, PhD, and his team at a textile startup company are creating face masks engineered to kill viruses like COVID-19 as soon as they make contact with the material, preventing them from entering a person’s respiratory system. “We just made a mask that can kill 99.9 percent of viruses within 10 minutes of contact,” Abbas says. “And we think we can do even better than that.”