EdTech: How drones can sanitize for COVID
UC aerospace engineering professor Kelly Cohen explains how drones can help during pandemic
EdTech Magazine talked to University of Cincinnati professor Kelly Cohen about how drones theoretically could be deployed on college campuses to help fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to EdTech, studies are underway in Europe to see if unmanned aerial vehicles that do widescale crop spraying can instead be used to disinfect large indoor or outdoor areas for COVID-19 before people use them.
Kelly Cohen, interim department head of UC's Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, told EdTech that this is theoretically possible.
“There are spaces where you have a lot of students congregating, maybe moving from one building to another, and that open space could be disinfected by drones,” he told EdTech.
In UC's College of Engineering and Applied Science, Cohen's students work on new drone applications and technology in UC's UAV Master Lab. Students work on topics such as robotics, intelligent systems and navigation.
UC engineering students have partnered with such diverse agencies as NASA, the Ohio Department of Transportation and the U.S. Air Force Research Lab, among others. Their projects have tackled traffic monitoring, infrastructure inspections and disaster response and management.
Featured image at top: UC research associate Bryan Brown, left, and UC graduate Austin Wessels operate a drone in this 2018 photo. UC collaborated with the Ohio Department of Transportation on a traffic-management project. Photo/Andrew Higley/UC Creative + Brand
UC graduate Austin Wessels operates a drone in this 2018 photo. Photo/Andrew Higley/UC Creative + Brand
Related Stories
Sugar overload killing hearts
November 10, 2025
Two in five people will be told they have diabetes during their lifetime. And people who have diabetes are twice as likely to develop heart disease. One of the deadliest dangers? Diabetic cardiomyopathy. But groundbreaking University of Cincinnati research hopes to stop and even reverse the damage before it’s too late.
Is going nuclear the solution to Ohio’s energy costs?
November 10, 2025
The Ohio Capital Journal recently reported that as energy prices continue to climb, economists are weighing the benefits of going nuclear to curb costs. The publication dove into a Scioto Analysis survey of 18 economists to weigh the pros and cons of nuclear energy. One economist featured was Iryna Topolyan, PhD, professor of economics at the Carl H. Lindner College of Business.
App turns smartwatch into detector of structural heart disease
November 10, 2025
An app that uses an AI model to read a single-lead ECG from a smartwatch can detect structural heart disease, researchers reported at the 2025 Scientific Sessions of the American Heart Association. Although the technology requires further validation, researchers said it could help improve the identification of patients with heart failure, valvular conditions and left ventricular hypertrophy before they become symptomatic, which could improve the prognosis for people with these conditions.