High School Junior's Coronavirus Mask Draws Positive Response

NORTHERN VIRGINIA — Emerging from the darkness of a global pandemic that has devastated communities and families are stories of people coming together to help each other out. Across the country, people are getting to know their neighbors better as they offer to buy groceries for them and check in on their elderly neighbors.

In Northern Virginia, 16-year-old Parnika Saxena set her sights on both the short term and long term when she started thinking of ways to help people survive the coronavirus crisis. Because she lives with both her parents and grandparents, Saxena knew she had to take all the necessary precautions to prevent the coronavirus from entering her home, especially with her grandparents living there.

Saxena, a junior at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County, also wanted to focus on longer-term ways to fight the new coronavirus, or COVID-19, and any future viruses that may emerge. She had some extra time on her hands to focus on research, with schools across Virginia shut down and the governor instructing residents to stay at home.

As the coronavirus spread around the globe, Saxena and her family, who live in the Loudoun County section of Chantilly, would have conversations almost every night at the dinner table about the coronavirus and what they could do to help people. In those conversations, Saxena told her family about a concept that might help to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

The idea was a type of face mask that allows oxygen to pass through, making it breathable, yet stopping coronavirus particles from getting through.

Applying what she had learned in classes at school, her school's Nanotechnology Club and her own independent research, Saxena came up with the idea of a graphene mask. The mask covers all openings of the face. It is transparent, making it ideal for everyday use by not only health care workers, but also the general public. It is lightweight, strong, flexible, and stretchable, making it easy to fit to face as a mask.

“I was able to put together this theory and proposal for a face mask that can hopefully help people in the prevention of COVID-19,” Saxena said in an interview with Patch.

Saxena wanted to know if she was on the right track and if her idea for a face mask that she believed could protect people from the coronavirus was feasible. So she sent her proposal to her classmates, teachers and professors at universities and laboratories.

Her teachers were supportive of the research she had started. And professors across the country responded positively to the idea. They sent her suggestions on ways to proceed with improving the concept.

One group of university professors said they wanted to discuss the concept with her and would talk about the mask among themselves this week before holding a Zoom meeting with Saxena.

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Local politicians, like Virginia Del. Suhas Subramanyam, have reached out to Saxena to congratulate her for developing an idea that could prove extremely helpful to health care workers and the general public.

After speaking with a couple other experts in the field, Saxena said she was able to improve the design of her graphene mask. The experts suggested that since "monolayer nitrogen-doped graphene" is too thin to stand on its own, using it as a coating on textiles could be more practical.

Too complicated to explain over the phone, Saxena sent Patch a follow-up email explaining the changes suggested by the experts.

"This gives us the ability to fashion the graphene (along with a textile) into a 3D mask as well as take care of the concern that I had about the conductive property of graphene," Saxena said in the email. "When a conductor of electricity (graphene) is coated onto a insulator/non-conductor of electricity (textile), it breaks the electrical circuit."

One downside of using graphene is its high cost. However, Saxena has learned in her research that graphene flakes are cost-effective as opposed to a layer of graphene. "However, this will require more research into seeing how to cost-effectively produce this mask," she said..

In case you're wondering how it's possible that a high school junior is coming up with innovative ways to protect people from the coronavirus and future viruses, you need to understand her school. In national high school lists, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, or TJ, is often described as the best high school in the U.S.

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TJ is a magnet school located just off Little River Turnpike between Anandale and Alexandria that enrolls students from school districts across Northern Virginia. It's extremely difficult to get into the school. If young people pass the rigid tests to get into TJ, they will get the opportunity to take such courses as nanochemistry and quantum physics.

Saxena said she was introduced to graphene in the Nanotechnology Club and has been hooked on studying its potential ever since.

"It’s a like a song you can’t get out of your head. Once you read about it, it's so fascinating — its properties and the amount you can do with graphene," she said.

Saxena is scheduled to re-start school at TJ — along with students at schools across Fairfax and Loudoun counties — through online classes on Tuesday, April 14.

Along with her aptitude for the hard sciences, Saxena is a skilled dancer, an interest she acquired from her mother and grandmother, both of whom are dancers. Saxena won a Girl Scout Gold Award for a dance therapy program she developed. The Gold Award is awarded to Girl Scouts who have made a significant impact on their community and is one of the highest honors a Girl Scout can receive.

Saxena takes her dance therapy workshops to schools, assisted living facilities and nursing homes across Northern Virginia. She also got the opportunity to travel to India and Kenya to demonstrate her dance therapy.

"We use dance therapy as a means to bring joy to our communities. We encourage dance to be used as a form of self-expression and exercise as well as a topic for scientific discussion, regarding the neurological and muscular benefits of dance," Saxena explains on her website.

Saxena also has developed an app that has dance tutorials and instructions for people unable to attend her in-person worshops.

"Anything to help the community is very fulfilling," Saxena told Patch.

For her graphene mask idea, Saxena created a video that lays out the problem and how her use of nanotechnology in developing a mask could be one solution for containing the spread of the coronavirus.

With surgical masks, large particle droplets can be blocked. But they do not filter extra small particles in the air that are spread by coughs and sneezes. The loose fit of surgical masks does not give complete protection. Also, on the downside, surgical masks are for one-time use only.

"With the production of graphene masks, health care workers, the sick and the healthy can effectively and comfortably protect themselves from COVID-19," she explains in the video.

Saxena wants universities and labs to learn about her idea because many of them have the resources to create graphene mask prototypes that can be tested. At the very least, universities could verify the validity of the mask makeup that she has hypothesized can work, and in turn, help communities as soon as possible.

"It’s going to be so amazing if someone can actually test this and put it to use," Saxena said.

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