Dr. Doug Dunham, a UW-Eau Claire professor of materials science and engineering and director of the university’s Materials Science and Engineering Center, pulls together a team to help health care workers in the Eau Claire area.
When medical workers everywhere — including the Chippewa Valley — began pleading for more personal protective equipment as they battle COVID-19, Dr. Doug Dunham knew UW-Eau Claire’s Materials Science and Engineering Center could help meet the needs of the local medical community.
“We have 3D printers and we have people with expertise,” says Dunham, a professor of materials science and engineering and director of the MSEC at UW-Eau Claire. “We just had to determine how we can use them most efficiently to help health care workers in the Chippewa Valley.”
To find out, he pulled together a team of UW-Eau Claire faculty and staff and then partnered with Mayo Clinic physicians and staff, and community makers to identify what they could do to have an immediate and significant impact on health care workers in and near Eau Claire.
“By coordinating with physicians and others, we will have a much better end result,” Dunham says of the initiative. “They’re helping us establish our priorities as we decide where to focus our efforts first.