Students’ Unique Platform for Face-Shield Production Hits Close to Home

For the students behind The CommonHealth Project — a collaborative, community-based initiative aimed at rallying volunteers for production and distribution of urgently needed personal protective equipment (PPE) — the pandemic is deeply personal. Mark Pothen ’22, a mechanical engineering major at NJIT, for example, hears stories from his mother, a physician working on the front line at Mountainside Hospital. Adé Kolade ’23, an Honors scholar who is studying electrical engineering, is the son of a doctor and a public health nurse-turned nursing professor. And Ruth Fiore ’21, a biomedical engineering student, is living with two of her sisters, who both work full time at a grocery store and have been wearing the same KN95 masks every day for more than a month. To read the full story.