Faculty and students at two University of Maryland engineering labs in College Park, led by the Department of Chemical and BioMOLECULAR Engineering (ChBE), are now producing hand sanitizer and surgical masks for health-care workers and others fighting coronavirus.

Professors Dongxia Liu and Chen Zhang have switched a chemical and biomolecular engineering lab over to making “Terpsanitizer” from isopropyl alcohol and aloe vera gel for free distribution, using a recipe from the Food and Drug Administration.

Earlier this month, a hundred bottles of the hand sanitizer were donated to the Gaithersburg-Washington Grove Volunteer Fire Department. They plan to continue donating the hand sanitizer to other first responders and members of the community along with essential UMD staff.

Department head Peter Kofinas, meantime, is using another lab to manufacture surgical masks by spinning polymers into fibers and spraying them through an airbrush.

Kofinas is working with Dr. Anthony Sandler, surgeon-in-chief a at Children’s National Hospital in D.C. on the design of the masks, which he hopes can be used soon. He said the masks only take a few minutes to make and that he hopes to start soon ramping things up and supplying doctors at Children’s with the masks.

The two were already working together on using the spray polymers to create adhesive wound dressings.