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- All Subjects: Biomedical
- Creators: Harrington Bioengineering Program
The project was aimed towards middle school and high school students, as this is the estimated level where they learn biology and chemistry—key subject material in biomedical engineering. The high school students were given presentations and activities related to biomedical engineering. Additionally, within classrooms, posters were presented to middle school students. The content of the posters were students of the biomedical engineering program at ASU, coming from different ethnic backgrounds to try and evoke within the middle school students a sense of their own identity as a biomedical engineer. To evaluate the impact these materials had on the students, a survey was distributed before the students’ exposure to the materials and after that assesses the students’ understanding of engineering at two different time points. A statistical analysis was conducted with Microsoft Excel to assess the influence of the activity and/or presentation on the students’ understanding of engineering.
This thesis project is the result of close collaboration with the Arizona State University Biodesign Clinical Testing Laboratory (ABCTL) to document the characteristics of saliva as a test sample, preanalytical considerations, and how the ABCTL utilized saliva testing to develop swift COVID-19 diagnostic tests for the Arizona community. As of April 2021, there have been over 130 million recorded cases of COVID-19 globally, with the United States taking the lead with approximately 31.5 million cases. Developing highly accurate and timely diagnostics has been an important need of our country that the ABCTL has had tremendous success in delivering. Near the start of the pandemic, the ABCTL utilized saliva as a testing sample rather than nasopharyngeal (NP) swabs that were limited in supply, required highly trained medical personnel, and were generally uncomfortable for participants. Results from literature across the globe showed how saliva performed just as well as the NP swabs (the golden standard) while being an easier test to collect and analyze. Going forward, the ABCTL will continue to develop high quality diagnostic tools and adapt to the ever-evolving needs our communities face regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.