A top medtech research site, the Boston-based Karp Lab has responded to COVID-19 with a virus-fighting nasal spray, better mask straps and much more.
Biomedical engineer Jeffrey Karp in his eponymous lab at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston. (Image courtesy of Brigham and Women’s Hospital)
COVID-19 completely disrupted the work at Jeff Karp’s medical engineering lab at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.
One company that was planning to do research with Karp and his students pulled out; Canadian undergraduate students were called home by their government and couldn’t finish their experiments; postdoctoral students whose work was scheduled to end in June and couldn’t finish had to move on to other commitments. Undergraduate summer interns couldn’t start work because the hospital had imposed a hiring freeze.
Karp has chosen to look on the bright side.
“There’s a lot of challenges that we face but at the same time there’s a lot of opportunities that are arising,” said the Canadian-born bioengineer based at the Brigham and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “There are multiple new projects that have come out of this.”
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