The team, led by the professor Kevin Golovin (MIE), aims to develop new paint preparations that make the walls, the preferred indoor resting place of the diphtheria insect, inhospitable. The project is one of five supported by the Global Engineering Seed (GESeed) program in its first round. The catalyst fund was set up at the U of T Engineering’s Center for Global Engineering (CGEN) to support the development of research involving the community facing critical challenges in Indigenous communities and developing countries in the South World. Mosquitoes are responsible for the deaths of at least 725,000 people each year, according to the World Health Organization, earning the title of “the world’s deadliest animal” from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “In fact, only female mosquitoes bite humans and transmit diseases,” says Golovin. “And it is only when they are hungry and looking for a meal of blood, which is usually around dawn and dusk. “For the rest of the day, mosquitoes rest – and they like to rest on surfaces that are dark, warm and vertical.” Golovin was working for an anti-mosquito association with Dr. Mark Rheault, a professor of biology at the University of British Columbia, when one of his students, Letícia Recla (MIE PhD candidate), observed that mosquitoes continued to slide on the sides of the chambers that housed the insects during the controlled laboratory test.
“We started thinking that maybe they could not catch it,” says Golovin. “So we started designing experiments where we changed the surface structure of the side walls to see when they could no longer catch it.” The researchers found that if they took a piece of glass and changed its roughness, it would eventually become smooth enough for mosquitoes to land on it. “Covering all glass surfaces in all areas of the global South is not a realistic option,” says Golovin. “So we want to take the same value of softness and translate it into a color that could cover the places where mosquitoes are used to sitting when they are resting, forcing them to migrate elsewhere and away from people when it’s time. for their meal with blood “. Golovin has partnered with Loop Recycled Products, a Niagara Falls-based recycled paint company that works to divert paint from landfills and incineration, supplying unused paint and turning it into a new product.
“We are currently trying to make the paint as smooth as possible. “We try different additives in different concentrations and explore different paint colors,” says Golovin. “We are repeating this list of parameters so that we can have something that works on many different surfaces, including rough and porous surfaces, such as brick.” Once this is achieved and the researchers create a commercially viable dye additive, the plan is for Loop Recycled Products to add it to their dye and distribute it to their partners in the South of the World. The Ontario company already has a presence in developing countries through its free paint initiative, in collaboration with non-profit and humanitarian organizations.
Four more projects were supported by the GESeed fund in its first round:

Professor Jorg Liebeherr (ECE) is collaborating with the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai for one Large Scale Low Cost Environmental Monitoring System for Smart Agriculture Professor Jeff Brook (Dalla Lana School of Public Health, ChemE), with Professors Greg Evans (ChemE, ISTEP), Arthur Chan (ChemE) and Jeffrey Siegel (CivMin) is partnering with the Fort McKay First Nation Sustainability Department, AUG Signals Ltd., at Cleaner air for an indigenous community severely affected by energy development Professor Chi-Gan Li (MIE) collaborates with the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Sensartics Private Limited Optimal irrigation control in environments affected by climate change Professor Moses Eisenman (BME) collaborates with Dr. Myrna Lichter Revolutionary vision care in indigenous communities

CGEN Program Manager Ahmed Mahmoud oversees the first round of GESeed. Understands the challenges of finding funding opportunities for projects that have not yet reached a certain level of technological readiness, especially if the approach is original or non-intuitive. “GESeed’s goal is to provide early-stage funding for many promising projects with high potential for social impact, allowing researchers to obtain pilot data to prove their point,” says Mahmoud. “Working with organizations, they can help scale their products and ensure that they are informed about the needs of consumers in the market.”