Early this year, before much of the U.S. was concerned with the novel coronavirus, University of Pennsylvania’s César de la Fuente and his research team were working on a low-cost biosensor that could diagnose bacterial infections in a matter of minutes.

When the world began paying closer attention to the pandemic back in February, de la Fuente was awarded $80,000 through the inaugural Nemirovsky Engineering and Medicine Opportunity prize for his proposal todevelop rapid, paper-based COVID-19 breath tests through the developing technology. The idea is that the biosensor could eventually be integrated into face masks, and alert a wearer within a few minutes if the sensor found the virus present.

“We had been doing work developing local diagnostics for bacterial infections, but the team felt a sense of responsibility to contribute something useful to the moment,” said de la Fuente, who is a presidential assistant professor with the Perelman School of Medicine and head of the de le Fuente Lab in the Department of Bioengineering and the Departments of Microbiology. “Then we turned all efforts to build tech that would be meaningful, that could hopefully be helpful for the current current situation.”

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