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Technician in the Fischer Engineering Design Center packaging face shields.
Technicians in the Fischer Engineering Design Center are assembling 3,000 face shields for Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. | Image: Justin Baetge/Texas A&M Engineering

As Texas A&M Engineering finds innovative ways to help the community deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, the team at the SuSu and Mark A. Fischer '72 Engineering Design Center (FEDC) in the Zachry Engineering Education Complex is working around the clock to make those solutions a reality.

The FEDC’s skeleton crew of essential research members kicked off a project last week to provide Baylor College of Medicine in Houston with 3,000 face shields to help protect its medical workers while they treat sick patients.

Starting with a face shield design made publicly available by the Georgia Institute of Technology, the FEDC team modified the design to work with the materials they had available. The main challenge for completing the face shield design—essentially a resizable headband with a curved plastic sheet covering the user’s full face—was in finding a way to use a thicker plastic than is typically utilized.

Given their experience aiding thousands of students each semester with a wide variety of projects, the Fischer Engineering Design Center's essential staff is well suited to take on this project and others like it. | Video: Justin Baetge/Texas A&M Engineering

Dr. David Staack, director of engineering laboratory instruction, said due to supply shortages, staff technicians had to find a way to make the design work with the materials they had on-hand—including supplies he had available in his research lab, as well as those able to be sourced from the College of Architecture.

Typically during this time of year, the design center would be operating at full capacity helping students complete their senior design projects. With all classes going online in March due to COVID-19, Jim Wilson, general manager of the FEDC, said he and his team are glad to have found another way to be of service during these trying times.

“We miss the students, but what we’re doing right now, we know is helping a lot of people,” Wilson said. “The COVID-19 projects are our top priority right now.”

Technician in the Fischer Engineering Design Center assembling face shields.
Within a week of Baylor College of Medicine’s request, over 300 face shields were delivered, with the remaining less than 2,700 units on schedule to be delivered by the end of April. | Image: Justin Baetge/Texas A&M Engineering

The FEDC team also includes technical laboratory coordinators Adam Farmer and Todd Williams, as well as Nathan Panak, Cody Ricther, Brey Caraway, Richard McCalley, Iran Ramirez and Tobias Gualandri.

“You see all kinds of stuff online and on TV of people trying to help,” Farmer said. “For us to be able to do something and know that what we’re doing is going to people who are doing more good than we are, to help them, is a happy feeling.” 

The FEDC staff’s collective effort to bring these impactful projects to fruition is part of a wider Texas A&M community coming together—from loading dock attendants to members of the legal team—to make sure these critical pieces of equipment make it to those in need.

Fischer Engineering Design Center

The SuSu and Mark A. Fischer '72 Engineering Design Center is an exclusive academic makerspace and design center that focuses on learning, designing and building. Through partnerships with industry and non-profit sponsors, the center is an environment where concepts become solutions to real-world problems and student teams come together to build new prototypes, acquire new skills and develop new relationships. It is supported with differential tuition funds and it is open to engineering undergraduate students.