BESTies Shield the Bay

Five UC Berkeley BESTies (Mechanical Engineering Ph.D. graduates – Jessica Granderson, Catherine Newman and Jaspal Sandhu – and undergraduate researchers – Resham Khanna in Cognitive Science & Psychology and Akhil Padmanabha in Mechanical Engineering) are producing face shields for Bay Area county hospitals and emergency response systems, to meet our local healthcare professionals’ need for personal protective equipment as we ramp up to the COVID-19 surge.

True to their design roots, they’ve taken a solid design approach, and iterated the design with target recipients at Highland Hospital and other local, public systems. They have delivered over 2500 shields to Highland Hospital, and built up a great relationship with the logistics, infection control, and nursing teams. By all counts their design is preferred and offers several advantages over other donated PPE that may not really end up getting used by nurses in the higher risk contexts.  

See article published by the UC Berkeley School of Public Health: Shield the Bay blends human-centered design and equity to deliver face shields to healthcare workers most in need.

Please help by contributing to GoFundMe  for Shield the Bay to provide healthcare professionals with the safety tools they need.

Photo Captions: Jaspal Sandhu with Shield the Bay face shield (top)
Jessica Granderson (far right in center photo) at Highland Hospital; Catherine Newman (bottom photo) Prototyping for Shielding the Bay.

Full Shield the Bay team:

  • Gillian Chu , Undergraduate Researcher, Letters and Sciences, UC Berkeley
  • Jessica Granderson , Ph.D in Mechanical Engineering, Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, UC Berkeley
  • Resham Khanna, Undergraduate Researcher, Cognitive Science & Psychology, UC Berkeley
  • Sean Miller,  M.F.A., COSMO
  • Catherine Newman , Ph.D in Mechanical Engineering, UC Berkeley; Newman Design
  • Akhil Padmanabha, Undergraduate Researcher, Mechanical Engineering, UC Berkeley
  • Jaspal Sandhu , Ph.D in Mechanical Engineering, UC Berkeley School of Public Health
  • Michael Zuerch , Ph.D, UC Berkeley Department of Chemistry

Top Featured Image: by Erin Manzanilla (@erinmvanilla on Instagram), a 15 year old artist and student from San Lorenzo High School.