Hanwen Cui

AirSpeQ

Air pollution is pernicious — and the worst kind is too tiny to be seen. Its effects however are felt every single day. Just in East Asia and the Pacific, the World Health Organization estimates that 1.3 billion people almost a quarter of the world's population are breathing unsafe air each day. Pollution is linked to heart disease, some cancers and early deaths. In fact worldwide poor air quality, prematurely kills over 4 million people effectively being responsible for almost as many deaths as cancer and an order of magnitude more annual deaths than HIV and malaria combined. The sick, the elderly and children are especially vulnerable to air pollution related illnesses. AirSpeQ is commercializing a sensor for airborne particulate matter (PM). The technology is based on proprietary MEMS thin-film bulk acoustic resonator (FBAR) technology, and leverages more than 10 years of R&D at the University of California at Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. AirSpeQ has received funding from NASA and NSF. Recently Harvard University's T.H. Chan School of Public Health analyzed data from more than 3,000 counties with confirmed coronavirus deaths around the United States. They found a statistical link between long-term exposure to PM 2.5 and higher death rates from the disease caused by coronavirus.