As schools, businesses, and other organizations plan their strategies to reopen during the COVID-19 pandemic, testing people regularly for the coronavirus will be one of the key components in attempts to slow and control new waves of cases.
But current testing technologies can be slow—too slow—for the rapid spread of the virus. A positive test today doesn’t necessarily mean someone is still free of the virus two days later, which is about as long as the test results would take to be delivered if you are in the U.S.
That’s why technology that can perform instant and frequent testing could serve as an important weapon in the fight against a pandemic that has already taken a significant toll on people, markets, and governments around the world.
And it is precisely the technology that Nian Sun, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Northeastern, is working on.