Delaware State University has been awarded a large research grant from the National Science Foundation.
The three-year nearly 500,000 grant will fund a project entitled “Investigation of Enhancer Free Photo-generated Singlet Oxygen.” Singlet Oxygen is the lowest excited state of the dioxygen molecule.
“Our grant is to fund the research on the study of the laser virus and activation. What we’re having here is - we’re using small lasers to kill inactive viruses,” said DSU physics professor Dr. Aristides Marcano - one of the principal investigators on the project, which also includes researchers at the University of Maryland - Baltimore County.
Dr. Marcano says researchers hope to prove that singlet oxygen can be produced without any catalyst in virus samples.
If they succeed, it could potentially lay the groundwork for a chemical-free means of sanitizing foods, as well as drugs and vaccines derived from biological sources.