Photo by GE Researchers at General Electric are set to begin research into how they can turn commonly-used surfaces into COVID-19-detecting devices, the company announced this week. The GE Research team has received a 24-month grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop miniature sensors that can be embedded into mobile devices in order to detect COVID-19 particles on their surfaces. “We all come into contact with different surfaces during any given day, from computer screens and conference tables to kiosks at the airport and, of course, credit card machines at stores while running errands,” Radislav Potyrailo, a principal scientist at GE Research and principal investigator on the NIH project, said in a statement.