Dear Friends of Burn Design Lab,

I hope that you are all doing well and are managing through the pandemic without too much disruption in your lives. 

Not surprisingly, we have been working from home since mid-March. Three of us were scheduled to fly to Ghana on March 13th to conduct user research on the next iteration of the improved shea roaster. However, we decided to cancel the trip on March 11th, even though at that time Ghana had no cases of COVID-19. In fact, our prime motivation for cancelling the trip was a concern that we might unwittingly bring the coronavirus to Ghana; you may remember that the state of Washington was a hot spot at that time. There then came a point in April where we reluctantly put the engineers on furlough for a few weeks. Fortunately for them, the state unemployment compensation was more generous than usual at the time and Burn Design Lab was then fortunate enough to receive support through the federal payroll protection program.

Since then, we have managed to keep busy with research, design work, and a special project to make decontamination boxes fitted with UV light for EMT's and fire departments so that their N95 masks can be safely reused. The lead for this project is Professor Jonathan Posner from the University of Washington. Jonathan is also a member of our board of directors. Bop Powell (another member of our board) and the Meadow Creature team members are also heavily involved. 

With King County moving into Phase 1.5 of "Safe Start", we are getting back to working in the office, shop, & lab this week. It's different of course with the need for social distancing and wearing masks, but we meet regularly via Zoom and some of us, like Claire and Angela, are doing nearly all their work from home. We track the number of coronavirus cases in Ghana and Kenya each week – just to get a better understanding of what they are going through. 

We are as motivated as ever to develop clean burning cook stoves and shea roasters, knowing that the people who need them are otherwise faced with the slow-moving epidemic caused by indoor air pollution that can be just as deadly as COVID-19. 

With gratitude,

Paul Means