It was an honour to be invited to the University of Toronto and Chinese University of Hong Kong co-hosted workshop on air filtration for the control of infectious disease — and to come ready to listen, learn and engage with the topic from an academic perspective.
What the researchers brought
Professor Jeffrey Siegel of the University of Toronto and Professor Chun Chen of the Chinese University of Hong Kong offered valuable insight into the latest research, the open challenges and the innovations shaping this field.
Professor Amy Li of the University of Waterloo made the strongest impression on our team: detailed explanations in accessible language, backed by a rigorous research methodology and real attention to detail. What you take from a presentation like that is not only the findings but the academic mindset and the standards behind high-quality research.
What a manufacturer brings back
We were glad to contribute a complementary viewpoint: the commercial and manufacturing perspective. Our CEO, Dave Lea, spoke to the importance of bridging the gap between theory and real-world application — exploring with students what is actually feasible from a production and implementation standpoint.
That gap is where our work sits. A filtration concept that performs in a test rig still has to be extruded at web speed, hold its specification across a production run, and reach a customer at a price and lead time a real programme can carry. Both halves of the conversation matter.
Why we keep showing up for this
Filtration is a specification business, and specifications come out of research long before they reach a purchase order. Staying close to the people doing that research is how a media line stays ahead of what it will be asked to make.