Maryland Today | Record-breaking $9.4 million crypto gift to fund study of…

Milton has emerged in recent years as one of the most prominent scientific voices supporting the use of masks to protect against the spread of COVID-19, and his work was cited by the National Research Council in its April 2020 letter to the White House warning that COVID-19 can spread by breathing and talking. The message, and many of Milton’s findings, contradict long-held beliefs in medicine that harmful viruses are spread mainly through relatively large respiratory droplets that quickly fall to the ground.

“The Covid-19 pandemic demonstrated the need to control the spread of respiratory infections without shutting down social and economic activities,” Milton said. “We have the technology to prevent the airborne spread of respiratory diseases. But if we are going to use these technologies to control the next pandemic, we need to invest in it now, before it starts. This generous gift from Balvi is going to help us put the basis for making it happen.”

The Balvi Philanthropic Fund quickly prioritizes deploying funds to high-value COVID projects that traditional, institutional or commercial funding sources tend to overlook for being premature or “outside the box.” Buterin’s recent philanthropy has included gifts to improve the COVID response in India and to support Ukrainian relief efforts as the country battles a full-scale Russian invasion.

Milton previously installed a special germ-killing GUV air disinfection system in their lab to protect people studying influenza, and since January 2020 they have been involved in the PHAB Lab’s StopCOVID study. The devices, which are common in certain medical settings, are capable of “easily and silently killing half of the bacteria floating in indoor air every two minutes or less,” Milton wrote earlier this year in a New York Times essay – but major obstacles prevent wider deployment of the systems.

This Balvi gift will enable the PHAB Lab team to work to overcome these obstacles through five main efforts:

• ONE randomized controlled trial conducted with volunteer participants at a hotel in Maryland over several years aims to definitively test whether respiratory viruses are spread by aerosols. It is part of a large study of transmission funded by a $15 million cooperative agreement with the National Institutes of Health. The Balvi gift will enable the extension of the experiment to use GUV as well as filtering to study the mode of transmission. “We know that filters remove and UV kills viruses, but is this virus airborne? The broad scope of my work is to provide evidence that is definitive, for or against the importance of airborne transmission, that stands up over time and that can be built upon for to prevent future pandemics, Milton said.

• Public attitudes and communication research will target acceptance of GUVs to clean indoor air, as public perceptions will ultimately determine whether GUVs can be successfully implemented on a large scale, Milton said. Considering how mitigation measures such as masks and vaccines became political flashpoints during the COVID-19 pandemic, the project will involve SPH’s health literacy experts and researchers working in collaboration with Black barbershops and hairdressing salons.

• Training and certification of technicians and contractors will cover the need for expert installation and maintenance of these systems. The PHAB Lab team will work with a team of internationally renowned GUV safety experts and the International Association of Lighting Management Companies to accelerate efforts to develop a training and certification program.

• Optimization of GUV system design aims to identify the best ways to use UV light to effectively remove bacteria, even when the bacteria comes from someone sitting nearby. Researchers will test this ability with bacteriophages, viruses that infect and replicate only in bacterial cells and can be released safely into a space occupied by humans.

• A field intervention study, planned to be carried out in collaboration with local Busboys and Poets restaurants, will test how GUV affects transmission in real-world settings.

“Preventing future pandemics is a major challenge, and universities have an important role to play,” said UMD President Darryll J. Pines. “Our University of Maryland experts are leading research and testing technologies that could impact disease transmission and transform how we respond to the next global health threat.”