Moving at the speed of need

Jim Lynch: College of Engineering, University of Michigan

How bold moves in COVID-19’s early days are powering new possibilities five years later.

They say necessity is the mother of invention. But fear deserves some credit too.

COVID-19’s official United States arrival, in Washington state on January 20, 2020, jolted the nation into high alert. Escalating death tolls, mixed messaging from government officials and uncertain paths of transmission raised all kinds of questions. Each one potentially had life-or-death repercussions during the pandemic, a slow-motion catastrophe that claimed millions of lives around the globe.

On college campuses, it was an all-hands-on-deck moment as researchers scrambled to use or adapt their expertise to find answers.