How germs travel on planes -- and how we can stop them | Raymond Wang

Can I get a show of hands --

how many of you in this room have been on a plane in this past year?

That's pretty good.

Well, it turns out that you share that experience

with more than three billion people every year.

And when we put so many people in all these metal tubes

that fly all over the world,

sometimes, things like this can happen

and you get a disease epidemic.

I first actually got into this topic

when I heard about the Ebola outbreak last year.

And it turns out that,

although Ebola spreads through these more range-limited,

large-droplet routes,

there's all these other sorts of diseases

that can be spread in the airplane cabin.

The worst part is, when we take a look at some of the numbers,

it's pretty scary.

So with H1N1,

there was this guy that decided to go on the plane

and in the matter of a single flight

actually spread the disease to 17 other people.

And then there was this other guy with SARS,

who managed to go on a three-hour flight

and spread the disease to 22 other people.

That's not exactly my idea of a great superpower.

When we take a look at this, what we also find

is that it's very difficult to pre-screen for these diseases.

So when someone actually goes on a plane,

they could be sick

and they could actually be in this latency period

in which they could actually have the disease

but not exhibit any symptoms,

and they could, in turn, spread the disease

to many other people in the cabin.

How that actually works is that right now

we've got air coming in from the top of the cabin

and from the side of the cabin, as you see in blue.

And then also, that air goes out through these very efficient filters

that eliminate 99.97 percent of pathogens near the outlets.

What happens right now, though,

is that we have this mixing airflow pattern.

So if someone were to actually sneeze,

that air would get swirled around multiple times

before it even has a chance to go out through the filter.

So I thought: clearly, this is a pretty serious problem.

I didn't have the money to go out and buy a plane,

so I decided to build a computer instead.

It actually turns out that with computational fluid dynamics,

what we're able to do is create these simulations

that give us higher resolutions

than actually physically going in and taking readings in the plane.

And so how, essentially, this works is you would start out

with these 2D drawings --

these are floating around in technical papers around the Internet.

I take that and then I put it into this 3D-modeling software,

really building that 3D model.

And then I divide that model that I just built into these tiny pieces,

essentially meshing it so that the computer can better understand it.

And then I tell the computer where the air goes in and out of the cabin,

throw in a bunch of physics

and basically sit there and wait until the computer calculates the simulation.

So what we get, actually, with the conventional cabin is this:

you'll notice the middle person sneezing,

and we go "Splat!" -- it goes right into people's faces.

It's pretty disgusting.

From the front, you'll notice those two passengers

sitting next to the central passenger

not exactly having a great time.

And when we take a look at that from the side,

you'll also notice those pathogens spreading across the length of the cabin.

The first thing I thought was, "This is no good."

So I actually conducted more than 32 different simulations

and ultimately, I came up with this solution right here.

This is what I call a -- patent pending -- Global Inlet Director.

With this, we're able to reduce pathogen transmission

by about 55 times,

and increase fresh-air inhalation by about 190 percent.

So how this actually works

is we would install this piece of composite material

into these existing spots that are already in the plane.

So it's very cost-effective to install

and we can do this directly overnight.

All we have to do is put a couple of screws in there and you're good to go.

And the results that we get are absolutely amazing.

Instead of having those problematic swirling airflow patterns,

we can create these walls of air

that come down in-between the passengers

to create personalized breathing zones.

So you'll notice the middle passenger here is sneezing again,

but this time, we're able to effectively push that down

to the filters for elimination.

And same thing from the side,

you'll notice we're able to directly push those pathogens down.

So if you take a look again now at the same scenario

but with this innovation installed,

you'll notice the middle passenger sneezes,

and this time, we're pushing that straight down into the outlet

before it gets a chance to infect any other people.

So you'll notice the two passengers sitting next to the middle guy

are breathing virtually no pathogens at all.

Take a look at that from the side as well,

you see a very efficient system.

And in short, with this system, we win.

When we take a look at what this means,

what we see is that this not only works if the middle passenger sneezes,

but also if the window-seat passenger sneezes

or if the aisle-seat passenger sneezes.

And so with this solution, what does this mean for the world?

Well, when we take a look at this

from the computer simulation into real life,

we can see with this 3D model that I built over here,

essentially using 3D printing,

we can see those same airflow patterns coming down,

right to the passengers.

In the past, the SARS epidemic actually cost the world

about 40 billion dollars.

And in the future,

a big disease outbreak could actually cost the world

in excess of three trillion dollars.

So before, it used to be that you had to take an airplane out of service

for one to two months,

spend tens of thousands of man hours and several million dollars

to try to change something.

But now, we're able to install something essentially overnight

and see results right away.

So it's really now a matter of taking this through to certification,

flight testing,

and going through all of these regulatory approvals processes.

But it just really goes to show that sometimes the best solutions

are the simplest solutions.

And two years ago, even,

this project would not have happened,

just because the technology then wouldn't have supported it.

But now with advanced computing

and how developed our Internet is,

it's really the golden era for innovation.

And so the question I ask all of you today is: why wait?

Together, we can build the future today.

Thanks.

(Applause)